Hi friend,

As said earlier on this forum, what I was scared of in the forest was not animals, reptile or arachnids it was defenitively the ants, which have a very bad bite and are, in my opinion the only one to be agressive in the forest, which mean attack without provocation.

Army ant are FASCINATING, but unfortunately make ravage in the Gabon forest ... As soon as I could find a burrowing species of the genus Phoneyusa, a few days later I was coming back for more information but the ant took it away... it happen a few time.

One day I was walking in forest and something catched my attention in trees, there was a monkey ... I continued walking but walking in the trees, and when I looked down again my pants were not grey anymore, they were black ... my pants were totally covered of army ant, biting and doing all they can to scare that big predator that I am. After removing them, I saw my boots were covered of them to, with their head completely penetrated in the boots ... their mandibules are so strong, it is fascinating! In my researsh I had the chance ''lol'' to get bite maybe 10 to 15 time, and the pain is incredible ... a nice 9 on 10!

One bite is incredibly painful, but just imagine ... im sorry the video on you tube is very bad quality I had to reduce it a lot to make the size of the file acceptable
http://youtube.com/watch?v=uApDLXiyRuw

Back in the good old days as boys - we used to play a game with Carsten and others.
If we came across a line of what we called the Safari Ants (Siafu in swahili) - we used to remeber where they were and return at night on bikes. Stop a couple of meters away and let our friends stop behind us; of course we used to stay on the bikes for several minutes - allowing enough time for the ants to wander up the legs of the person chosen to get laughed at... and the fun part was to start and see them jump... happened to me a few times so of course I had to victimise others...!!!