Antlions are a species of insect that have fascinated me since I was a young boy. As a child, I used to keep them as pets, I would keep them in an ice-cream tub filled with sand. I used to love to watch them digging around, making patterns in the sand (for this reason they are called Doodle Bugs in America), and once they had their pitfall traps made, I would go out to hunt ants and small bugs for them to eat. As I threw the ant into the Antlions trap I would watch this set of huge jaws come out the sand to grab be helpless victim and pull it down into the sand till it was totally buried. I thought these little bugs were so cool.
Then one day my Antlions became inactive, afraid they had died I searched very carefully through the sand. I could not find my antlions in the sand, but I did find strange looking round balls of what appeared to be silk and sand spun around something. Little did I know that I had just discovered the next step to and Antlions life cycle. I kept these strange looking balls to see what came out, at the time I was convinced that they were egg sacks.
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Many people are totally unaware that antlions also go through a process of total Metamorphosis. From these insects that live in the sand, they spin into a cocoon and after a few weeks or months they emerge as adult Antlions. The adult Antlions look a lot like dragonflies, however they are mostly active at night.
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Like most other insects, there are several different species of Antlions, ranging from a 2cm wing span to 15cm wing span. There are usually brown/grey in colour, but I have seen large black and yellow ones at the Kenneth Stainbank Nature Reserve.
As larva (babies) or adults, Antlions are totally harmless to humans.
If you would like to have your bugs, spiders or even snakes identified you can WhatsApp me pictures or call me on: 0722110353
WATCH:Â How antlion catches prey
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