How big of a threat would giant ants be in a low magic fantasy setting...

Well there is a difference between being able to carry something and being able to handle the impact of something falling on you.

How would dogs or wolves fare against giant ants?

Figure out what attracts them and try to send them towards another hive so that they break each other's numbers down.

If you have to fight, take advantage of their swarm behavior where they follow each other.
Lead them away from villages and towards barricades. Try and funnel them into an area filled with pitch and burn them.

If they're in large numbers like real ants everything is fucked. They'd also destroy their environment to the point of driving themselves to extinction

Everything on Earth evolved the way it did for a reason. You can have billions upon billions of tiny insects because the ecology can support such a number.

Bud, they're able to carry that much precisely because they're so small, once you scale up gravity starts getting in the way.

That being said it would still be a staggering amount in all likeliness.

Just not 5000x.

They don't have impressive strength for their size. Anything of that size with an exoskeleton can lift like ants do. Their ability to lift is a function of their volume-to-surface-area ratio, not ant strength. That ratio is why a dog-sized creature with an exoskeleton would be easy prey for basically anything.

But, you know, magic, so whatever.

...

Bah. Not fucked at all. I just need a really big magnifying glass.

Large arthropods can, and did exist. However an ant can't be scaled up directly. Their legs would be too weak to support them and they couldn't breathe. Increase their leg strength and give them lungs and they could survive alright. Their durability would be like lobsters and crabs, since they use the same armor - chitin. Pretty difficult to break into but not really on the level of metal armor. They'd probably be "swift" but nowhere near the speed of, say, a cheetah or wolf.

Pictured is Haidomyrmex scimitarus, aka the "Hell Ant", the very first ant species ever. It would have both a stinger and a deadly jaw biting from below. No clue how strong their poison would be, but their bite would be like being hit by two large scimitars. They were apparently an aggressive, predatory species closely related to wasps. They'd be a great enemy. Their bite would likely do either 2d4 (two small scimitars) or 2d6 for larger warrior mandibles. Notably these stabbed up instead of springing in from the side like modern ants. They probably wouldn't have huge numbers, though. They'd rapidly eat everything in an area if they did and nothing indicates they're migratory. They'd likely be like a wolfpack; a dozen or so members and a hidden queen with some guards.

Type two: Honeypot Ants and Leafcutter ants. Large animals have large dietary needs, so I'll just combine these two types into one. One herds aphids and has some ants with giant abdomens full of "honey". The other ants strip green foliage to make and cultivate mounds where fungus grows. If you want a candidate for a Thri-keen like society, this is it. Leafcutter ants have the largest and most complex ant society period, but they strip down all the foliage around them without fail. With the two combined they'd probably cultivate plants for their aphids and cut down everything else to grow mushrooms. Their mounds would be full of ants with giant abdomens full of honey and edible fungus.

How do you think their climbing ability will be with their new size?
Would they form hills, or just make burrows or take caves like bears do.
Would they ignore people if their diet is fungal based?

While neither honeypot ants or leafcutter ants are particularly aggressive they'd be extremely dangerous to societies nearby because they'd strip down everything green in an area, causing famines. With their food storage those are famines they don't particularly have to care much about. Attack wise just imagine their mouths are like large crab claws. 1d4 damage, nothing special. But damn would they have crazy numbers. We're talking "attacking a city" level numbers.

Next up would be the more dangerous ants. Army ants are migratory and eat every goddamn thing they run across, including people. And that's at their normal size! They're an apocalypse level threat for any society. They'll show up in huge numbers and eat everything. Cows, people, monsters, wizards, the dreaded housecat. They have serious mandibles too. While most are the typical 1d4 variety the warriors are - well, look at those things! Those things are like fucking swords. At least 2d6 damage, maybe more. They can climb, they can form rafts from their own bodies, and they'll devour every living thing in an area, period. However they come and go, so a great plot could be defending a city in their path until they leave.

And finally fire ants. They've got the largest numbers, they eat everything and they're sedentary, so they're individually less dangerous than army ants and they'd be much smaller. Think small dog size. However they have deadly venom and ludicrous numbers. They eat quite literally everything. Areas they dwell in won't even have insects. If you managed to survive an army ant attack they'll go away, but areas taken by fire ants are GONE. Unless you wipe their hundreds of queens out you're flat fucked. They're resilient, dangerous, and innumerable. Your traditional flying wizard throwing down fireballs wouldn't make a dent in their numbers. Cities taken are gone. Farmland taken is gone. A team of adventurers can kill stragglers, but it'd take armies to truly wipe them out.

Hell Ants were essentially half wasp and if they made burrows they were probably small ones. They'd probably adopt caves.

Leaf Cutter ants make enormous nests and are natural diggers. they're persistent if nothing else and would indeed make mounds. Could they dig into rock? Eeeeh, probably not hard rock. But they're smart; if any ant species could use tools it'd be them.

Army ants are not nest builders. They come, they eat, they leave.

Fire ants are but there's no reason to think they could dig through rock. Instead they'd probably love predug tunnels and try to expand them. They'd probably favor living in dwarven tunnels, or umber hulk territory. That said their favorite would probably be human cities where they could live in the buildings and sewers after eating the inhabitants. A campaign to retake a lost treasure from a city eaten by fire ants would be a good one. Given how they swarm at the slightest provocation you'd need incredible stealth skills.

They can handle so much weight relative to themselves because 5,000 times nothing is still nothing.

Things become less efficient the larger they get, which is why you don't see equivalent lifting ability even in larger insects. It's a physics problem.

If you get bored of normal ants, here's a few different ones.

Australian Jumper-Jack ants have a mean bite but their main attack is a sting. That said their venom isn't particularly dangerous - as long as you're not allergic. Most people are, and it can send you into anaphylactic shock. They jump and hop around and they'd be large for ant species. They're farmers, but not super voracious like a lot of other species. Like all Aussies they love fighting and will regularly fight even each other. They're active hunters and foragers and can jump after prey.

youtube.com/watch?v=kAggi3eqYhg

Also sorry, I couldn't resist posting a glorious American insect documentary on them.

>Insert you wouldn't want to mess with one of these mother suckers meme here

Whoops, forgot the pic.

And on the subject of ants that love to jump, you've got trap-jaw ants which can leap crazy distances using their jaws to fling themselves through the air. They're predatory and live in small colonies of about 200. At large sizes that'd likely be scaled down quite a bit, probably more like 20. Of course the mandibles that fling them through the air are also used to bite enemies, and they'd probably have the meanest ant bite period. 2d10, or something.

Now granted it wouldn't really realistically work at a large scale, but that'd eliminate the fun of having them as enemies in the first place.

>Party is walking through a grassy field, chatting idly
>Suddenly giant ants start raining from the sky
>roll for initiative

youtube.com/watch?v=_OHi_WcwObo

What do you think about a leafcutter/honeypot society that goes full agriculture? They instinctually have agriculture running their fungus production, but I mean an organized above ground agriculture system as a means of sustainably feeding their fungus crop?

If they're sentient they probably would. They'd copy other species if nothing else, and they'd want to feed their giant aphid herds if you're still dealing with a honeypot/leafcutter combo species. They're still ants and are anything but peaceful but they'd probably get along with other species better than any other.

It'd just depend on how you wanted to use them. "Civilized" ones would have full societies and might even be a playable race. "Barbaric" ones would devour all foliage in an area and drive a whole region to famine.

>Peasent finds leaf cutter ant egg.
>Raises it.
>It grows and begins farming fungus, living inside an underground barn of sorts.
>Farmer takes portions of edible fungus and sells it
>All is good
>Some wild adventurer sees the ant cutting down tree branches
>Slays it
>I saved your farm mister
>This is not a happy story

Its less of a question of what would be more of a hazard, and more of a question of what approach would leave a plausible long-term species for world building purposes. Think of a single colony of giant army ants, and think of the land area required to feed it so that the colony doesn't burn itself out. A single colony would be like the entire Mongol horde rampaging around Asia, only they never said "Good enough, time to go home," and instead just rampaged around for all of history. The time to repair damage caused, when compared to the dietary requirements of the colony would necessitate a truly ungodly stretch of territory.

I guess the alternative to a naturally evolved species is "A wizard did it" which would negate the question of "How are these still alive?" and create an immediate catastrophic event for PCs to try to deal with.

Unless people are particularly interested I'll leave off with most ant stories here, since there's tons and tons of ant species. Some highlights though:

>Some ant species can release poison gas to kill termites, the main rivals of ants since always
>Some ant species specialize in devouring other ant species or mooching off of them like ant NEETS
>Some ant species can spray venom like supersoaker streams
>Some ant species are slave-takers and kidnap other ants to live as slaves
>Some ants are not ants, but are in fact spiders disguised as ants that live among and eat ants
>Some ant species live in global megacolonies akin to ant-nations
>Crazy ants cover themselves in their own poison to counteract fire-ant poison and can slaughter fire ants with ease
>Camponotus saundersi ants have specialized venom glands, scream allahu akbar when dying, and explode into a cloud of venom
>Weaver ants would be another great species to cross with leaf cutter ants as they build buildings out of vegetation
>You're likely to encounter giant spiders and assassin bugs around giant ant colonies as they prey upon lone ants

Well they're a bit different than the mongols in that unlike humans they can eat basically everything period. They wouldn't necessarily need to have a eurasia sized expanse, they'd probably be fine with a "europe" or "china" sized expanse. Still, they'd definitely need a ludicrous range of territory and they'd never get half as numerous as the small versions. I think that would make them a good campaign idea; they're like a once every other generation issue.

Wouldn't these fire ants just burn themselves out? I mean, the army ants have the benefit of being constantly on the move, but it seems like fire ants would quickly run out of food in their territory, which would limit numbers considerably. Unless I guess they can also subside on something inorganic/otherwise unusable.

You forgot to mention the ants that open small cuts in animals and cracks in chitin so tiny ants can crawl into the cuts and cracks to devour them from the inside

immortalpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Scuttle_Valley

Depends on the oxygen content of the area, the more oxygen, the larger insects can be
Low fantasy settings can have giant insects

It would be fairer to say that fire ants "live to capacity". They will have the absolute maximum numbers they can based on the amount of living stuff around them. So whatever the maximum sustainable number of them you could have would be, that's what they'd be at. They're such an issue in the real world because they spread voraciously too, with hundreds of queens and constantly breaking off to form new colonies.

Another idea that came on the heels of this question. Let's just combine a few ants and call this species "Locust Ants".

You have a society of largely peaceful ants that combine leaf cutter, honeypot and weaver ant qualities. They build buildings out of foliage, grow aboveground crops and belowground fungus and herd aphids, storing honey in ants belowground. However once they hit a critical population mass or some other stimulus happens they hit a locust-like transformation period. They change into giant army ants and rampage across their continent until they find a good location to establish a new colony devouring everything along the way. Adventurers would have to regularly cull their numbers and couldn't wipe out all the giant spider or other monster species that eat them to prevent them from going full mongol-horde.

There's over 12,000 species, man. Feel free to add any species you like, we could literally be here all year discussing them all.

Ants are fucking terrifying.
If they were to gain sentience, they could wipe out EVERYTHING. And that's without the size boost.

Ant user.

We are particularly interested. Regale us with your formic knowledge.

I would send for the wing divers. After all, giant insects cannot fly

Not much, they will crumble from their own weight

>but it seems like fire ants would quickly run out of food in their territory, which would limit numbers considerably.
the problem with Fire Ants, especially with RIFAs in the southern US, is that while they are colonial, they break apart, expand territory, and send off new colonies faster an more often than the British Empire. They're essentially a mongol horde that sets up shop somehwere, kills off everything they can in an area, then sends out new colonies outside their area to expand and move on.

Seriously, RIFA are damn bastards, and are currently one of the driving forces in ecological damage and collapse in the Southern United States.

Good point. You can carry a big rock, but that doesn't mean you wouldn't get your brain smooshed if one fell on your head.

Bump for ants

Do you want ants? Because this is how you get ants!

>How big of a threat would giant ants be in a low magic fantasy setting.
watch the movie "Them" for the answer to your question. It's basically that.

Cat-sized or even bird-sized would be the most scary, since they'd be able to retain the terrifying swarm mentality and have just enough food to sustain giant anthills.
Wolf/bear-sized ones are less scary since they'd be less numerous because they will be automatically controlling their population, and more likely to follow a semisolitaryway of life. Smaller ones, however, could be a real pain in the ass to deal with, especially when it comes to huge cities.

>Bird sized
>They're winged ants that fly in swarms

There goes the neighborhood.

>They can climb, they can form rafts from their own bodies, and they'll devour every living thing in an area, period. However they come and go, so a great plot could be defending a city in their path until they leave.

>lead two colonies into each other
>world is saved

I've got bad news for you, user...

rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/277/1682/755

>When their numbers are depleted unrelated army ant colonies will merge into a single new ant colony and continue on the march

Addendum:
"When the queen of an army-ant colony dies, the workers may join another colony. In other cases, when two colonies of the same species meet, they usually change the marching direction to avoid conflicts."

Now what you would want to do is direct a column of army ants into a nest of fire ants. THAT would be an amazing conflict. I have no idea how that actually plays out in nature; there's no information on what happens when the two meet.

As another addendum, both the species Solenopsis mandibularis (Fire Ants) and Eciton hamatum (Army Ants) live in Brazil, but there seems to be absolutely no information on what happens when the two meet. If anyone finds information on this please let me know; it seems fascinating as all hell.