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.

The ant acacia is a small, thorny tree found in different parts of Costa Rica. It is famous, not for its impressive thorns or its ability to thrive in harsh environmental conditions, but because of ...

Feb. 15 (UPI) --Acacia ants have an exceptional sense of vibration. As a new study revealed, the ants, which live in and on Africa's acacia trees, can tell the difference between the vibrational ...

This news release is available in German. The biological term "symbiosis" refers to what economists and politicians usually call a win-win situation: a relationship between two partners which is ...

At the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, a wildlife preserve in central Kenya, lions and cheetahs mingle with zebras and elephants across many miles of savannah – grasslands with "whistling thorn" acacia trees ...

In Africa and in the tropics, armies of tiny creatures make the twisting stems of acacia plants their homes. Aggressive, stinging ants feed on the sugary nectar the plant provides and live in nests ...

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, ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla., March 18 (UPI) --Africa's acacia ants, Crematogaster mimosae, use their powerful, painful bite to defend their trees from leaf-munchers like elephants and giraffes. They also have ...

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.

Ant-acacia plants attract ants by offering specialized food and hollow thorns in which the ants live, while the ant colony in turn defends its acacia against herbivores. This mutualistic relationship ...

A new study explores a disruptive force in the delicate African ecosystem that holds consequences for even top predators like lions. The big-headed ant, first recorded on the island of Mauritius, has ...

Researchers find that the ants of the acacia tree are tipped off to the presence of herbivores by vibrations that run throughout the trees when an animal gets too close or begins to chew. As a result, ...