Baby-killing ant nannies rebel against captors
Photo by Myrmician
Here’s a story of kidnapped and enslaved ants who might be rebelling against their ant captors.
The captors are forcing the slave ants to work as nannies. But now a scientist believes the slaves are killing their captors’ young instead of caring for them.
EarthSky spoke to study author biologist Susanne Foitzik of Munich. Foitzik said these slave-making ants aren’t very good at doing their own housework. So they raid the homes of smaller ants, carry off the pupae, and raise them in their own colony, inside an acorn. But the slaves might grow up to become baby killing ant nannies. Theey kill the young by throwing the pupae outside the acorn or tearing it apart and leaving it to die.
It’s not unusual for different ant species to enslave each other, but before they had studied these colonies and noticed the rebelling ants, scientists thought slaves had no way of defending themselves from this.
But the rebellion doesn’t win the slaves their freedom because they wouldn’t know how to get back home. But what the rebellion does do is make it less likely that their relatives homes would be raided, and that’s why this behavior evolved.
