The term siafu is a loanword from Swahili,[2] and is one of numerous similar words from regional Bantu languages used by indigenous peoples to describe various species of these ants.

[3] As with their American counterparts, workers exhibit caste polymorphism with the soldiers having particularly large heads that power their scissor-like mandibles.

They perform a pest prevention service in farming communities, consuming the majority of other crop-pests, from insects to large rats.

Various East African indigenous tribal peoples (e.g. the Maasai moran), when suffering from a laceration in the wilds, will use the soldiers to stitch the wound by getting the ants to bite on both sides of the gash, then breaking off the body.

This use of ants as makeshift surgical staples creates a seal that can hold for days at a time, and the procedure can be repeated, if necessary, allowing natural healing to commence.

Males leave the colony soon after hatching but are drawn to the scent trail left by a column of siafu once they reach sexual maturity.

When a colony of driver ants encounters a male, they tear his wings off and carry him back to the nest to be mated with a recently hatched queen.