The Insect House is home to leaf-cutter ants, butterflies, scorpions and tarantulas.

A huge colony of leaf-cutter ants composts the forest floor.

These had once been leaf-cutter ants, content to slice up fodder for their own tribe.

The white worm lizard (Amphisbaena alba) is often found in association with leaf-cutter ants.

Just as fascinating are the leaf-cutter ants that carry pieces of leaves, usually appearing bigger than they are, back to their nests.

Textbooks describe how leaf-cutter ants scrupulously weed their gardens of all foreign organisms.

Other leaf-cutter ants detect this signal through 5 centimetres of earth, and rush to rescue the trapped workers.

Among the invertebrates, the most notable are the termites and the leaf-cutter ants ("saúvas").

The Newark Museum, for example, includes leaf-cutter ants and termites among its living collection.

The farmers of the insect world, leaf-cutter ants grow their own food in underground...