The acid test

Birds’ feathers can harbour a burden of parasitic ticks, mites and fleas.

To rid themselves of these pests they engage in ‘anting’. In this learned behaviour, the bird will find a red ant colony and disturb the insects. The ants come out to defend their nests spraying formic acid. When a bird settles over the colony during this ‘anting’ behaviour, it fluffs out its feathers and the ants invade the bird to drive it away. Their means of attack is acid spray. Some of the formic acid settles on the birds’ parasites which disengage in the attack. In doing so the ants deinfest the bird.

Of course this is high risk -  as you see at the end of the clip when the crow engaged in irritating the ants discovers the ants stinging invasion is a little too effective..

That smarts!