The thorny acacia trees of East Africa live in close harmony with ant colonies, and each depends on the other for health and survival - but disrupting that relationship can lead to death and danger, ...

If animals and plants can’t defend themselves, they often form partnerships with bodyguards. Wasps use zombified caterpillars. Corals recruit goby fish. And acacia trees hire ants. The ants defend the ...

For thousands of years, thorny African acacia trees have provided food and shelter to aggressive biting ants, which protected the trees by attacking animals that try to eat the acacia leaves. Called ...

After a recent period of major rainfall, I visited a wooded area to see what animals I could find, wondering if any had left for Noah’s Ark. I turned over an old piece of roofing tin and noticed that ...

Ants living in whistling-thorn acacia trees on the African savanna may weigh only 3 milligrams, but they can protect their trees from being demolished by elephants weighing a billion times more, ...

Throughout the tropics, ants and Acacia trees live together in intricate interdependent relationships that have long fascinated scientists. Now researchers are reporting that in Africa, this ...

Ants known to defend certain species of Acacia trees from elephant predation deter the massive herbivores so effectively that they are impacting entire savanna ecosystems, according to a study ...

Ecologists have discovered the secret weapon used by certain acacia trees to defend themselves against ravenous elephants: ants. The finding could one day help conservationists protect vulnerable ...

Ants in your pants? That's nothing compared with ants up your snout. And that's what elephants in the African savanna must contend with when trying to snag a meal from a certain type of acacia tree.

Acacia trees are a prominent feature of the East African savannah. They're also a classic example of the long-standing and complex relationships between plants and insects, in this case acacia ants.

AESOP’S FABLES are supposed to illustrate a moral point. If he had lived in Central America rather than Greece, though, he might have thrown in the towel at writing one entitled “The Ant and the ...

Ants in your pants? That's nothing compared with ants up your snout. And that's what elephants in the African savanna must contend with when trying to snag a meal from a certain type of acacia tree.