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A black drongo in a typical anting posture. Anting is a maintenance behavior during which birds rub insects, usually ants, on their feathers and skin.The bird may pick up the insects in its bill and rub them on the body (active anting), or the bird may lie in an area of high density of the insects and perform dust bathing-like movements (passive anting).
During anting, birds rub insects on their feathers, usually ants, which secrete liquids containing chemicals such as formic acid. These can act as an insecticide, miticide, fungicide, bactericide, or to make the insects edible by removing the distasteful acid. It possibly also supplements the bird's own preen oil. Although it has been suggested ...
It was once thought that attending birds were actually eating the ants, but numerous studies in various parts of Eciton burchellii's range has shown that the ants act as beaters, flushing insects, other arthropods and small vertebrates into the waiting flocks of "ant followers".
Juvenile birds do not have the white plumes, postocular streak, and rufous-chestnut "collar" of adults, and their upperparts are browner and underparts grayer. [ 5 ] The white-plumed antbird uses a complex basic molt strategy, meaning that the juvenile performs a preliminary molt before it molts into its characteristic adult feathers. [ 11 ]
Juvenile Iberian green woodpecker eating ants. Myrmecophagy is found in several land-dwelling vertebrate taxa, including reptiles and amphibians (horned lizards and blind snakes, narrow-mouthed toads of the family Microhylidae and poison frogs of the Dendrobatidae), some New World bird species (Antbirds, Antthrushes, Antpittas, flicker of genus Colaptes), and mammalian groups including ...
The bicoloured antbird is an obligate ant-follower.. Ant followers are birds that feed by following swarms of army ants and take prey flushed by those ants. [1] The best-known ant-followers are 18 species of antbird in the family Thamnophilidae, but other families of birds may follow ants, including thrushes, chats, ant-tanagers, cuckoos, motmots, and woodcreepers.
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The jack jumper ant (Myrmecia pilosula), also known as the jack jumper, jumping jack, hopper ant, or jumper ant, is a species of venomous ant native to Australia.Most frequently found in Tasmania and southeast mainland Australia, it is a member of the genus Myrmecia, subfamily Myrmeciinae, and was formally described and named by British entomologist Frederick Smith in 1858.