Israel Fears Giant Ant Invasion After Huge Tunnels Discovered Near Gaza

Kibbutz Nir Am, Israel, July 21 – Members of this agricultural community near the border with the Gaza Strip are troubled by the discovery of several large tunnels in the area, concerned that the tunnels indicate the presence of tremendous insects.

In several cases over the last week, Israeli soldiers have been called to the site of newly discovered tunnel openings, tunnels that apparently lead underground beyond the boundary with the Gaza Strip. Residents were ordered to remain locked in their homes while the IDF searched the area. No sightings of large insects were reported, but tensions remain high in the largely agricultural cluster of kibbutzim and villages surrounding the Gaza Strip, since the lack of sightings means the insects are either faster or stealthier than any known species of that size.

“Ants don’t dig tunnels so much larger than themselves in diameter,” explained Jerusalem entomologist Arthur Pod. “And they’re a social species, so you’ll seldom see a solitary ant for very long. What we have here is a troubling sign of ants that can dig tunnels hundreds of meters long far beneath the surface, and we have no idea what they eat, or anything else about them. We don’t know whether they’re dangerous – well, I should say how dangerous, because anything that size, in the numbers that ants represent, spells disaster for humans.”

The tunnels all seem to originate in the Gaza Strip, but the residents of that territory have not reported sightings of gargantuan insects, which makes the creatures that much more fearsome. “We think ultimately the ants might originate in Africa, but since we still lack a description we can’t be sure,” said Pod. “And we considered alternative explanations, but none of them seem to be consistent with the evidence.”

“I mean, moles can’t dig through this kind of ground, for one thing,” he explained. “So how else would the tunnels get here?”

At press time, Pod was being extensively interviewed by representatives of the European Union.