Titanomyrma

The Titanomyrma (Ty-tan-o-mur-mah), a giant ant, is one of the creatures in ARK: Survival Evolved, added to the game on the 18th of July, 2015.

Behavior
Titanomyrmas are very aggressive, and as the Dossier states, come in two varieties: Soldiers, with wings, and Drones that scuttle about the ground. Despite being much larger than you would expect of an ant, they're still quite small (about the size of a Dodo, but shorter), and their tendency to spawn in areas with grass makes them difficult to locate before they attack.

They generally spawn in groups of 5-7 with 2-3 Soldiers and the rest as Drones. Their biggest threat is their ability to attack by surprise, swarming an unsuspecting victim. But any survivor that sees them coming could fend off a large amount of them with a (provided it doesn't break) or a, as they have very little health, often going down in one hit, even when level 50-60.

The ants are also a great source of for survivors not well-equipped enough, or not brave enough, to go after Pulmonoscorpius.

Appearance
Titanomyrma come in two variants: Soldiers and drones. The former bear a resemblance to wasps or hornets, complete with aggressive buzzing. The latter resemble more typical ants. They are quite large, even for their genus, but still vastly dwarfed by the rest of the ARK's wildlife.

Drops
Cementing Paste is only obtainable with a Beelzebufo

Base Stats and Growth
Drone=

Soldier (Flying)=

Combat
This section describes how to fight against the Titanomyrma.

General
Titanomyrma almost always attack in swarms. Generally speaking, it will be the soldiers that you encounter first, as they fly faster than the drones can crawl. The sound of buzzing insect wings will warn you of their approach.

Strategy
Soldiers will fly around your head biting you while drones will head straight for your feet. Stabbing into the air with a spear/pike can dispatch the soldiers, while backpedalling while stabbing at the ground can dispatch the drones. Most players will be able to out-walk the drones unless encumbered, so the real danger with Titanomyrma is the quickness of the flying soldiers and their attacking numbers. Additionally, any Dino with an attack that has a large area of effect (such as a ) can take out multiple Titanomyra at a time very easily. If all else fails, Titanomyrma will not follow a player in the water, so take a swim if you need to escape/fight back. will just crush them with not only AoE attacks but also insane multipliers against them, bonus it gives.

Weaponry
The and  are both effective due to their reasonable range. Be careful using a though, as it can potentially break while fending off a swarm. Ranged weaponry is questionable when dealing with soldiers, as they fly too fast for accurate aiming, but drones are easily dispatched while backpedaling with a.

Dangers
The biggest threat of Titanomyrma is their bite. A bite from Titanomyrma will poison the player and cause their stamina to slowly decrease, preventing an escape, or increasing the possibility of falling unconscious due to stamina loss. Additionally, due to their speed and tendency to attack in swarms, it is difficult for players to avoid a bite (especially new players).

Weakness
Titanomyrma have very little health. Even at high levels, it only takes a few spear hits to dispatch one. Titanomyrma also cannot swim, which makes the water a safe alternative to launch an attack. If you somehow manage to get a drone into the water, it will stay in place until it drowns.

Roles

 * Resource Collection Source: Titanomyrma can not be tamed but like many other insects they can provide a good source of . If a is used to kill it though,  can also be gathered in large quantities.
 * Pestering: The Titanomyrma can be extremely difficult to get a large enough swarm to cause significant harm to an enemy. One spawning of ants can be used to pester enemy tames or survivors or be used as a distraction, especially thanks to their Stamina-draining attacks. though this tactic is quite circumstantial.
 * Poison:

Notes/Trivia

 * As of patch 188.0, Titanomyrma will not follow the player into the water.
 * The Dino Dossier was revealed on 06/29/2015 on Steam
 * In the dossier Helena mentions that the Titanomyrma Drones and Titanomyrma Soldiers are controlled by a queen. However the queen is not an actual creature in game. Helena also mentions that the Titanomyrma Drones harvest for the colony and Titanomyrma Soldiers defend the colony. While small groups have been seen and found a full size colony has yet to found.
 * It is likely that the Titanomyrma was initially intended to spawn from a central nest or in much greater numbers, as is shown in the drawing of the dossier showing them eating a alive and the text.
 * In the Primal Survival trailer there was gameplay of Titanomyrma Drones going through what appeared to be tunnels further proving they were originally intended to have hives.
 * Its highly unlikely we will ever see the hives or the Titanomyrma Queen from the actual ark devs however its not impossible as in the recent Crystal Isles map there was a enormous Giant Bee nest so it's not impossible to see a enormous ant hive based cave and possibly the Titanomyrma Queen in the future.
 * The dossier states that Titanomyrma is the size of a dog, but in reality, they were much smaller, with the males reaching 3 cm long, the queens reaching 6 cm, and the female workers' maximum size in between that of the males and the queen; wingspans reached up to 15 cm. This is still incredibly huge for an ant, as the largest ants of today, like the Driver Ant and Giant Amazonian Ant, can only get up to around 5 cm at maximum. With slightly more bulky bodies than these giant modern ants, the Titanomyrma was the largest ant to ever live, comparable to the size of a small hummingbird.
 * Driver Ants are one of the Titanomyrma's closest living relatives, with both sharing "huge" sizes, for ants at least.
 * The dossier states that it cannot be tamed due to its hive mentality, despite the Giant Bee is tamable and also has a hive mentality.
 * The attacks of the Titanonmyrma not only do high damage for their size, but also inflict the Poisoned affect, which drains.
 * Titanomyrma parvagigan means "Large ant that is small among giants".
 * Despite their ambush and poison attacks, when individual the drone variety is a strong contender for the weakest aggressive creature in the whole game. They are slow (easily out-walked), low hp (typically dead in one hit unless extremely high level), low damage (a single bite only takes off a few hp much of the time) and low impact (you can walk by them, aggro them, and sometimes not even realize it.) Without the soldiers, they pose little to no threat. Even when soldiers are present, even the most primitive survivor can take swarms down without too much difficulty.
 * titanomyra are most dangerous when caught without equipment (eg. while trying to retrieve gear after dying). In circumstances such as this, they can become a minor menace.
 * Contrary to the dossier, Titanomyrma of both castes will attack players without provocation.
 * Interestingly enough, the quick info box on the dossier states that it is a carnivore, but the main text states it is a herbivore.
 * When the dossier for the Titanomyrma was initially released, it was stated to be a herbivore, perhaps originally designed to contrast the Meganeura. Another change was that they were described as reactive, only becoming aggressive if approached too closely. Both of these were quietly changed with no explanation from the devs, perhaps due to the lack of coding for a nest for with which the drones could come and go from.
 * It is also important to note that the diet of these ancient ants are unknown, though they likely either sought after fresh foliage, like that of leaf-cutter ants which than feed their gathered food to a fungus in which they farm for consumption, or they actively raided and hunted dead or living prey. Either interpretations of a carnivorous or herbivorous diet are both likely.
 * The Titanomyrma is one of four creatures currently able to be harvested by for, the others being , , and the.
 * Strangely, the dossier describes the drones as smaller but faster, land bound units whereas the soldiers are described as larger but slower, winged units. These attributes are not quite accurate to the game, as the drones are in fact much slower than the winged soldiers.
 * When force tamed, they don’t have inventories, meaning they cannot carry anything, show stats, level up, or even eat, yet they will never starve because they do not even have a food status. The only status bar they have is an invisible health bar.
 * Fossils of Titanomyrma, which have been found in North America and Europe, show that they probably did not posses stingers and may have instead relied only on their strong jaws and formic acid.
 * In real life male ants sacrifice themselves to mate with the queen, after the male mates with the queen a few times they die because the male ants internal insides exploded.