Our house is surrounded by huge Ponderosa Pine trees. We have a circular drive around several of them, with a fire pit in the middle of it. And the ground of our property is made (seemingly, at least) primarily of rocks. So, especially under the trees, the dirt is dry and porous.
Every summer, beginning in June, we get these little pits in the dirt around the circle drive and under some of the other trees where we keep the pine needles raked up and do not water. They are made by a tiny creature called and Ant Lion, while it is in it's larval form. The little funnels they build are to catch small ants that wander along, fall into the sandy pit, and cannot get out. The ants struggle until they weaken and give up, fall to the bottom of the tiny pit, and become the Ant Lion's dinner. My husband has always called these bugs "Doodlebugs", and that is what my grandchildren and nieces and nephews know them as...
My oldest grandson, Alex, was most fascinated by them and became amazingly proficient at catching them. He would prepare a disposable pan with dirt and catch the little bugs.
He would scoop up a little shovel full of dirt around and under the doodlebug funnel and then blow the grains of sand and dirt away, to expose the little creature (and to insure he had actually caught one, as they are very skittish). Then he would put it in the pan and go after another and another and another...
After catching a dozen or more, he would let the pan sit over night. In the morning, it would look like this. After that, he would entertain himself for hours, catching little ants and feeding them to the voracious Ant Lions.
I copied this article from the Montana Radio site:
Found worldwide in arid and sandy habitats, ant lions belong to the order Neuroptera. Adult ant lions lay their eggs in dry, loose soil. Once hatched, the larvae crawl about in search of a suitable home site, leaving tracks that look like doodles. The same color as the soil, they are well camouflaged.Â
Their broad, flattened bodies have short, stubby legs, best for their habit of crawling backwards, which is also aided by the curve of the nearly invisible hairs on their body. As they begin excavation, their oval-shaped abdomen plows through the soil, while their flat heads act like a shovel, flicking sand up and out of the pit. Continuing their backward, downward spiral, abdomen first, the cone-shaped pit is constructed. Once complete, the pit becomes the ant lion’s home for up to three years.
Completely buried now except for its long, piercing mandibles, or jaws, which stick out of the center of the pit, the ant lion larvae lies motionless at the bottom, waiting for its first victim. An ant or a small insect steps inside the rim of the pit and begins the fight for life. The steep sides make it hard to crawl out. The ant lion further confuses the process by flicking particles of sand or dirt onto the frantic insect, aiding its descent into the pit. At some point in the struggle, the insect falls into the bottom of the trap or is impaled by the ant lion’s piercing mandibles. The predator drags its prey deeper into the sand, where it sucks out its body fluids. The ant lion then calmly takes out the trash, flicking the carcass out of its pit, and awaits its next victim.
The larvae develops in stages called instars, digging many pits, some as large as two inches in diameter and depth. The ant lion, now about a half inch in size, pupates in a spherical, sand-covered cocoon for about a month in spring or summer. Upon complete metamorphosis, adult ant lions resemble damsel flies, 1½ inches long, with narrow, net-veined wings they hold over their long, skinny abdomens like pup-tents when they are at rest. Adult ant lions live for one to two months.
