Hornet Hurls Ants Into Air

Occurred on July 27, 2022 / Dohr, Germany

Info from Licensor: "Last summer I also spent time observing, photographing and filming social wasps in my garden in Dohr (in the Eifel region) in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. I spent hundreds of hours observing and arranging until the animals got used to me (and I got used to them) and then I managed to take some extraordinary pictures.

Honey bees, wasps, field wasps and hornets gather at a drinking trough filled with water or sugar water and enjoy drinking the energizing liquid. Especially in the fall, when the insect colonies are slowly approaching their annual end and the last workers have already hatched, various species gather here.

But ants have also discovered this drinking trough. They also love the sweet, energy-rich liquid. And they don't like being disturbed at all. Although they are absolute dwarves compared to the hornets, they are not at all shy about nipping them in the legs or spraying them with formic acid.
The hornets are extremely annoyed by these pesky little creatures and bite wildly, and if they catch an ant with their large mandibles, they hurl it through the air in a high arc. An interesting behavior that I was able to observe again and again and finally capture on video."