The Bug Lady

Saúva (Sa-UUUUUUUH-vah)

Repeat after me: sa-UUUUUH-vaaah, sa-UUUUU-vaaah…

Yes, it sounds like the name of an ancient curse that the elders of the little town warn the foreigners about. You know, you may be right.

This ant, seen here feeding on a piece of wild chewing gum, is a big threat to your farming enterprise. The saúva, or Atta sp. (I think this one is the Atta sexdens…sexdens… tehehe) are famous for their capacity of taking your entire crop in one day. They are leaf cutters, and they are really good at that, no waste! You can tell you’ve been visited by all the sad leaf skeletons they leave behind.
Their strength is pretty ridiculous too. You first see from far away a quarter sized piece of leaf moving around, and then you see the saúva under it.

Rarrr!

They are farmers, themselves. They use all those leaves to feed a fungus back at home, which they use to keep the babies fed. The fungus culture is started by the queen. Ah, cool story about the queen…

You know that hot weather is coming in south-east Brazil when the “revoada das içás” happens. That means flight of the içás (saúva queen-to-be). Both females and males leave their original nests and go swarming, and you can see tens of thousands of them out on the street. It’s soooo cool. When I was little, my sister and I would get jars and go collecting them for fun. Then we’d go hey dad look what we got! And my dad would fry them in a pan and eat them…:-| I swear to god he would EAT THEM.

To be fair with my dad, my grandmother is native-american, and it’s a tradition for them to eat the fat butts of the içás, fried in oil and cassava flour. I’ve had butts, they are not too bad, nutty and kind of sweet, fried in butter with the flour soaking up all the flavor, it’s really not bad at all.

So when the içás and the males go on their nuptial flight, they carry little ball of fungus in their mouths, which they took from their mother nest. That little ball is what starts her very own fungus culture in her new kingdom. And then for some reason she poops on it. Wikipedia says it’s the initial irrigation.. yes, nature works in mysterious ways.

And then a new cell of massive destruction is born. Other than the queen, there are other 3 types of ants in the nest, all females and all sterile: the soldiers, the big farmers and the little farmers. When you see a line of them, you usually see these really big-headed ones standing on the left and right of the row all along the length of the line. They are keeping the big farmers safe. The little farmers stay in the nest, cutting the big pieces into small pieces and carrying it to the big fungus farm. it’s all very organized and stuff.

So there you go, the story of the dear saúvas of my childhood, As fun as they may be for kids, something that can destroy a year’s worth of production in a few hours is probably something you should keep an eye out for… if you buy land in Brazil, that is.

Saúva (Sa-UUUUUUUH-vah) by The Bug Lady, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.