A man camping in the Amazon rainforest has shared a TikTok showing leafcutter ants destroying his tent and belongings.
The video was shared by Paul Rosolie, a conservationist and co-founder of Jungle Keepers, and has received over 2 million views since it was shared on August 16. Rosolie was on an expedition in the Peruvian Madre de Dios region of the Amazon when he woke up to an “insect party” in his tent at around 2 a.m.
He told Newsweek: “It was like a festival of all different insects because the leafcutter ants had made the hole and then the mosquitos had come in, and then somehow grasshoppers and moths and everybody had come in.”
@junglekeeper/TikTok
“If it wasn’t the last night of the expedition, we would have been in real trouble,” he added. “After that, we had to go back to a base camp. We have a research station out in the jungle that has solar panels and a staff. We run a pretty serious research conservation.”
In the video, Rosolie tells viewers that he had been trying to sleep but the ants were cutting “leaf-sized holes” out of his tent big enough to put his fist through. The clip shows the ants eating away at the TikTok creator’s tent and carrying away the nylon material.
They can also be seen destroying Rosolie’s backpack. He revealed that after the incident, all that remained of the bag was its straps.
Rosolie said that the ants were also attacking his ear with the “big scissors on their mandibles.”
“This is one of those times where you know it’s four more hours until morning, if you get out of the tent you’re gonna get destroyed by mosquitos, it’s raining outside, you’re gonna get wet,” he says in the video. “This is what camping in the wild is.”
“Sometimes you put your tent in the wrong place and the leafcutter ants and the gods of the jungle decide it’s gonna be the worst night ever,” he continued. At the end of the video, Rosolie shows a large spider perched close to his head.
The Amazon Basin spans across nine South American countries: Brazil, Peru, Suriname, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, and French Guinea. According to the World Wildlife Fund, there are between 96,660 and more than 100,000 invertebrate species, which includes insects, identified by scientists in the Brazilian portion of the forest alone.
TikTok users were blown away and amused by the video. One user with the handle @izzy_walking commented: “the greatest part about camping in the amazon is that you don’t have to do it”.
“You couldn’t pay me enough. This is truly my nightmare,” wrote Hannah Lee, while @Julia_Kaitlyn said: “The gasp I guspt when you cut to the TARANTULA”.
@ themovementlife.tiktok wrote: “I stayed in an open-wall tree hut in the Peruvian jungle and a bug stole my toothbrush and flew off with it in the night. 0/10 would not recommend.”
Mr Fizzywater said: “That tarantula heard you and came to keep the bugs away so you could sleep. What a nice guy.”
