On a hot summer day an elephant drinks 200 litres (50 gallons) of water.
Ant fever
Ant fever Crazy ants, named for their frantic movements, are
destroying a unique rainforest habitat. On Australia's Christmas
Island, there are few seedlings and shrubs due to the delicate
equilibrium maintained by red land crabs. However, in the past 18
months, the crazy ants have gone berserk, attacking and eating the
land crabs. They are also creating havoc in the forest canopy.
Feeding on a sugary secretion produced by sap-sucking scale
insects, they protect this source of food from its natural
predators. As a result, scale insects are booming in numbers and
causing many patches of the forest canopy to die back. The ants
have been living peacefully on Christmas Island since the 1930s and
scientists are puzzled as to why they have suddenly become a
menace. 27 MARCH 1999, P. 12
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