A Lead Destroying Ant from Panama

During the winter of 1947 the telephone line of a police station in the city of Balboa, Canal Zone, suddenly went dead. The station was serviced by an underground cable encased in a lead pipe of three quarters of an inch in diameter. Workmen began to dig up the cable and after a prolonged search found the cause of the disturbance. A colony of ants had attacked the lead shell of the cable, had severed it effectively in one place and had cut deep notches in several other places. In addition large areas of the lead sheathing had been peeled off by the insects and the cable had been scored deeply in other places