Army ants are social insects that travel through the forest consuming every small creature that cannot get away from their advancing 100 foot wide mass. Each ant raid may last up to a couple of weeks. As the ants advance through the litter on the forest floor, opportunist ant birds will fly along above the front of the army ant swarm, feeding on insects like the katydid, that escape the swarm.
Heliconious butterflies flutter around army ant columns to find and eat ant bird droppings, which contain amino acids required for their eggs to develop. In the caterpillar stage, the butterflies feed on passion flower vine leaves, eating the toxins that make them inedible to predators such as the ant bird. The passion flower vine is the preferred site to lay Heliconious butterfly eggs. To protect itself, the passion flower vine has evolved many adaptations to avoid being eaten by the developing caterpillars.
When not on a raid, army ants will stay in one place for almost three weeks during which time they lay their eggs. After these eggs hatch, producing larvae, the raids start over to feed the hungry young.
