Workers are roughly 17–20 mm long.
Fine-art photographic collection
Paltothyreus tarsatus
A giant subterranean hunter whose nest can contain thousands of ants — and a frog living safely among them.
About this species
African Stink Ant
Paltothyreus tarsatus(Fabricius, 1798)
Information reviewed15 July 2026
Paltothyreus tarsatus is a large African ponerine ant that occupies extensive underground nests. Workers hunt individually through forest litter, and colonies may contain well over a thousand ants connected by deep tunnels and multiple entrances.
Taxonomy
Animalia · Arthropoda · Insecta · Hymenoptera · Formicidae · Paltothyreus
Accepted taxon. · checked 2026-07-15
sub-Saharan AfricaBroad range and selected reference localities — not a complete occurrence map.
sub-Saharan Africa
Tropical forest, woodland and moist savanna soils.
Large workers forage singly over the ground and through litter.
Predatory, taking termites and other invertebrates.
Social; colonies may contain roughly 1,500 workers and can be larger.
What makes this species remarkable?
Excavated nests contain deep chambers from about 30 centimetres to well beyond a metre underground and may house several thousand workers.
Seventeen-to-twenty-millimetre hunters can emerge from tunnel openings far from the nest centre, creating a hidden subterranean transport network.
The frog Phrynomantis microps can shelter inside active colonies because compounds in its skin suppress the ants’ normal attack response.
More photographs
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