How Ants Make Lions Eat More Beef

Healthy ecosystems maintain a delicate balance of resources, plants, and animals. Remove one part of the food chain, and you get cascading effects that throw the balance off. Bringing in an invasive species can have the same devastating effect. That scenario is playing out now in the savannas of Kenya. The arrival of the big-headed ant some twenty years ago has changed the diet of the lions who live there- they are eating more water buffalo and fewer zebras. It's a chain reaction that involves several other species along the way, and as the story is still playing out, we don't know how it will end, or how other species will be affected.