I’m continuously fascinated by the doodles that tiny ant lions leave in the sand. It might look like something you’d doodle in a notebook! Doodlebug trails meander all over the place as they scoot backwards. The other day, I watched one eject little puffs of sand as it moved around.
See those little puffs of sand? There’s a small insect down here, burrowing backwards.
It's a doodlebug!
A doodlebug is the larval state of a winged insect called an antlion. Don’t let the sweet name fool you: this is a fierce predator. They look like something out of science fiction: and they have been around since the age of the dinosaurs. They have heavy square-shaped heads with a pair of sickle shaped mandibles. These mandibles are hollow, so they can be used to capture prey, inject the prey with venom, and then consume the prey using digestive enzymes.
What makes a doodlebug unique?
They also have strong legs that move them backwards under layers of sand, and tiny hairs that keep them from slipping.
Building a pit of death
They burrow backwards underground, tossing bits of sand until they decide where to leave a cone-shaped trap. Then they throw sand up and out until they have a perfect inverse volcano, with the entire doodlebug buried underneath with its jaws close to the surface.
When an ant or insect runs across the edge of this pit, the loose sand slides and knocks the prey toward the antlion’s formidable mandibles. The antlion grabs the prey, paralyzes it with venom, and then consumes it by injecting digestive enzymes and slurping or sucking the nutrients out of the incapacitated ant. I’ve never seen them capture ants until last week at our educational program.
Doodlebug/ antlion life cycle
Antlions belong to the insect order neuroptera, meaning “net-winged” insect. They undergo complete metamorphosis: from egg, to larva (the doodlebug stage.) After 1-3 years, they make a cocoon from silk and sand, and stay buried under the sand as a pupa, and then emerge as an adult.
Adults look a little like dragonflies, with two pairs of long, slender wings. They usually fly at night, and unlike dragonflies, they have clubbed antennae, and LOTS of tiny hairs on their front legs (they look almost furry). I think their flight is more fluttery than dragonflies: they look like iridescent fairies! What a lovely adult for such a “hideous” larva.
Doodlebug Rhymes are legends of childhood
Supposedly kids used to pass the time of lazy summer afternoons singing doodlebugs out of their holes. “Doodlebug, Doodlebug come out and play” or
Doodlebug, doodlebug,
Come out of your hole
Your house is on fire,
And your children will burn.
Sometimes these rhymes are accompanied by using a pine needle to tickle the edge of the cone to simulate an ant, and sometimes it’s just humming and singing. Apparently, both will create vibrations that might cause the doodlebug to just head up to the entrance to the pit.
