This living raft is made of thousands if not millions of fire ants - it is about one foot across in size. Kyle Pias, a BugGuide user who took this photo, wrote:
This raft was seen floating in a flooded portion of the Kissimmee Prarie. Im prettty sure the genus is Solenopsis, but Im not sure which species, and I doubt that its identifiable from this picture. It was taken from about 5 feet above the subject from a swamp buggy, and there was about 3 feet of water on the ground, so there was no getting a closer shot.
Can you imagine what would happen if something walked into one of these rafts? I cant even think about what to do if that happened, I doubt even dunking underwater would accomplish anything...
That hurts just to look at. We were draining our pool one day, and as I was going around scrubbing the walls, I found a submerged fire ant bed. The hard way. I got about 25 bites on my foot, each swelled up as big as a nickel. Owie.
That hurts just to look at. We were draining our pool one day, and as I was going around scrubbing the walls, I found a submerged fire ant bed. The hard way. I got about 25 bites on my foot, each swelled up as big as a nickel. Owie.