Harpegnathos Venator– Primitive Asian Jumping Ants - EXPERT
 
Please consider the risk of shipping this species overseas if you order them from outside of the UK. They do not travel well.
 
For the advanced keeper, we all need something to keep us on our toes. As far as Ponerine species go, Harpegnathos is just the kind of species to do this.
 
They have huge eyes and know exactly what you are up to. Navigating the forest floor solo they can pin and disable fair sized prey. Being a jumping ant, vision is crucial to using this capability (this can be up to 10 cm in distance so make sure your setup has a lid). In addition to this, they can run backwards too!
 
They are solo hunters and unlike many ants they do not use a pheremones to comunicate whilst hunting.
Using an interesting trait of wiggling their caster before a strike they immobilise their prey but do not kill it. The Venator is famous for its “living larder” and they will paralyze an insect, take it to the nest and it will remain in this state until it is fed to their extremely active  highly mobile larvae. Being truely primitive the Queen and workers of this species feed purely on the haemolymph of their insect pray and so do not require any additional sugars. 
 
This species is one of the few species where Gamergates are present. This means that both female casts ( Queen and worker)can produce eggs. Males of this species can inbreed with unfertilized workers to produce fertilzed egg laying workers known as gamergates. It is worth noting though that they are alot less efficient than the dominate queen herself and will lay less eggs than her.
 
In the wild Hatpegnathos Venator have been found to nest in clay based substrates, most of the time on the side of clay banks. Their nests normally consist of 2-3 chambers with their nest enterance being lower than their nesting chambers. This is to minimize the effects of flooding and predators/ unwanted intruders entering into the nesting chambers. The enterance to their nest is normally funnel shaped and around 3 cm in diameter, generally this sits 2 cm off the ground. Within their nests it has also been documented that they have many symbiotic reltionships with sprintails and some species of milipede. These organisms get to feast on the remains of the Venators rubbish which prevents mold and bacteria outbrakes, and in return they have a safe protected environment to live.
 
It is advised to either use a natural setup or an esthetic ants ytong nest with added coco fibre or clay based substrates within the nest chambers. This allows the ants to create their own chambers within the nest if required. Make sure that the subsrate is always kept damp within  chambers and ouworld, we have found this to work the best for capt