I've seen the fire ants covering newly hatched alligators by the hundreds as they where coming out of the egg on more than one documentary in the past, and I know for a fact that many times fire ants live in the very nest mounds themselves. I'm quite sure what I saw wasn't "staged" for the sake of a camera shot either.

But no, I didn't discover any of this on my own personal airboat with clipboard in hand to jot down the data, but I'm sure it is a fairly common occurrence nonetheless in many parts of the south. Sure, I would assume most clutches as a whole go on to hatch successfully and leave the nest, but I'm also pretty sure some do not get that luxury.

It would be interesting to find some hard data on any studies of this sort though, to see what the percentages really are.

Now I don't have any visual proof of this myself, but my logic tells me this would also happen to snake once in a while too as they hatched. I'll bet when those freakin ants sense all that tasty yolk drizzling out of the egg, they come runnin by the groves to devour the yolk and ANYTHING that has yolk on it as well.

I'll bet if you were to crack an egg and leave it anywhere near a fire ant nest, it would look like a Los Angeles riot in short order!..LOL!


~Doug
-----
"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

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