Acacia

Two giant anteaters fight it out. On the left, the individuals lash out at each other with their enormous claws, and on the right they posture at each other (with the dominant animal, with the upright and puffed-out tail, on the right). From Kruetz et al 2009. In the northern state of Roraima in Brazil, small plantations of the black wattle tree (Acacia mangium) serve up plenty of food to carpenter ants and other insects, and the variety of six-legged pests has attracted numerous giant anteaters. The trouble is that these immense xenarthrans don't typically get along very well. As described…
In Latin America, there lives a unique spider called Bagheera kiplingi. It's a jumping spider and it shares the group's large, acute eyes and prodigious leaping ability. But it also has a trait that singles it out among all 40,000 species of spider - it's mostly vegetarian. Virtually all spiders are predators. They may hunt using different methods but they all end up sucking the liquidised innards of their prey. If they consume plants, they do so rarely, even accidentally. Some take the odd sip of nectar to supplement their diet of flesh. Others accidentally swallow pollen while recycling…
On my recent visit to the coastal forests of Kwazulu-Natal I noticed basketball-like growths on many of the Acacia trees.  In North America, any large gray ball you see hanging off a tree branch is liable to be a hornet's nest.  In South America, it's probably a carton nest of fierce little Azteca ants. The equivalent in South Africa?  I didn't know. A little bit of poking around in the acacias revealed the culprit.  It was Crematogaster tricolor, an orange ant about half a centimeter long: They didn't appreciate the disturbance, apparently, because they came after me without…