African weaver ants (so-called for their ability to build nests of leaves bound with the ants' silk) maintain the largest territories in the invertebrate world. From elaborate treetop citadels, a colony of up to half a million individuals can deploy its forces over six square miles. To feed such a colony, says entomologist Janusz Wojtusiak of the Zoological Museum in Krakow, Poland, the ants, each about three-tenths of an inch long, prey on relatively large insects as well as on birds, lizards, frogs, snakes, and even bats. Their modus operandi -- death by stretching -- involves many worker ants pulling on the victim in a lethal tug-of-war, culminating in the arduous trek up a tree with quarry in tow. How, Wojtusiak wondered, do the ants haul prey hundreds of times their size? (The ant shown here, for example, holds a bird weighing about a quarter of an ounce.) The answer...See Discover magazine, November, 1996, for complete article.