Workers are commonly 12–16 mm long.
Fine-art photographic collection
Pachycondyla crassinoda
A powerful hunting ant that usually refuses to sting prey and recruits at most two followers at a time.
About this species
Pachycondyla crassinoda(Latreille, 1802)
Information reviewed20 July 2026
Pachycondyla crassinoda is a large Neotropical ponerine ant. It nests in soil beneath rotting wood and hunts independently through leaf litter.
Taxonomy
Animalia · Arthropoda · Insecta · Hymenoptera · Formicidae · Ponerinae · Pachycondyla
Accepted as Pachycondyla crassinoda; Formica crassinoda Latreille, 1802 is the original combination. · checked 2026-07-20
Tropical South AmericaBroad range and selected reference localities — not a complete occurrence map.
Tropical South America, especially the Amazon and adjacent forests.
Lowland rainforest and moist forest floor beneath logs and litter.
Workers forage singly on the ground, often searching beneath leaves.
Small arthropods, carrion and liquid foods.
Small to medium subterranean colonies.
What makes this species remarkable?
Despite possessing a formidable sting, workers usually subdue prey with their mandibles and reserve venom for prey that continues to struggle or for defence.
No mass trail recruitment has been observed: the strongest recruitment response is tandem running, and even then a leader guides only one or two nestmates.
A forager systematically searches beneath individual leaves on the forest floor, using a slow, close-range hunting method tuned to concealed arthropods rather than open pursuit.
Sources and scientific references
More photographs
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