Drunken Camponotus

I can’t figure out these Carpenter Ants (Camponotus floridanus?).

They are much larger than the Pheidole megacephala minors and majors, and could probably avoid them altogether or run right through their foraging lines.

But in at least three instances that happened over the span of three days, the giants tried to fight and ended up prey instead. In all three cases, I did not directly witness how the Pheidole megacephala initially managed to snag such huge ants, but in one case the Carpenter ant was already injured and was ultimately mobbed by the Pheidole (not sure whether it had been captured earlier but managed to escape temporarily).

In the first instance I did not see the initial encounter, but found a beheaded corpse being swarmed by the P. megacephala. In the second case, I noticed that a Carpenter ant near a P. megacephala foraging line was limping, and when I took a macro of it, it showed that the ant had lost a leg and part of one antennae. I do not know the circumstances of how it lost the joints, but individual P. megacephala workers were rushing up to it and trying to bite it. It tried to fight back until it was ultimately swamped as more and more P. megacephala piled on.

In the third case, a Carpenter ant seemed to be attracted to the honey bait that I had placed for the smaller ants, and was rushing back and forth around it. I did not pay attention to it, but I later found that it had been captured and was being killed as well.

I should point out I have never seen one killed before this in months of observing the P. megacephala, so not sure what changed. Perhaps the weather had something to do with it, or more likely, it was the fact that the P. megacephala cluster has been expanding and is now infringing on areas with these giant ants.