Ants use sleeper cells!

[Cain]

Fuck, I'm never going to trust anyone again, in case they are secretly working for an enemy hive. Bloody ants, their mindless devotion to war is scary:

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/04/the_rebellion_of_the_ant_slaves.php

Humans aren't the only species that have had to deal with the issue of slavery. Some species of ants also abduct the young of others, forcing them into labouring for their new masters. These slave-making ants, like Protomagnathus americanus conduct violent raids on the nests of other species, killing all the adults and larva-napping the brood.

When these youngsters mature, they take on the odour of their abductors and become the servants of the enslaving queen. They take over the jobs of maintaining the colony and caring for its larvae even though they are from another species; they even take part in raids themselves. But like all slave-traders, P.americanus faces rebellions.

Some of its victims (ants from the genus Temnothorax) strike back with murderous larvae. Alexandra Achenbach and Susanne Foitzik from Ludwig Maximillians Universty in Munich found that some of the kidnapped workers don't bow to the whims of their new queen. Once they have matured, they start killing the pupae of their captors, destroying as many as two-thirds of the colony's brood.

Ants that are targeted by slave-makers take massive hits to their colonies and they are under intense pressure to resist these marauders. But all the defences discovered so far happen before the raids have been successfully completed. They involve better fighting skills, quicker reaction times when enemies are spotted, hastier escapes and so on.

Some scientists have suggested that strategies like this would be impossible to develop because the enslaved workers are caught in an evolutionary trap. Far away from their own colony, and sterile themselves, there is no way for them to increase their reproductive success. But Achenbach and Foitzik have rejected this idea - their conclusion is that by conducting assassinations within their new home, they severely reduce the slave-makers' numbers and their ability to conduct raids. That safeguards the future of their relatives.

[LMNO]

We have a word for horror and mirth.


Now we need one for something that's both really Cool, and very Creepy.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Cooreepy

As in "Wow Cain, that is coo...reepy"

[the other anonymous]

We have a word for horror and mirth.


Now we need one for something that's both really Cool, and very Creepy.

Republicrat.

Japan.

Wikipedia.

LMNO.

[LMNO]

We have a word for horror and mirth.


Now we need one for something that's both really Cool, and very Creepy.

Republicrat.

Japan.

Wikipedia.

LMNO.

I WANNA BE AN ADJECTIVE!

[Kai]

Darwin wrote about the slave making ants 150 years ago in On the Origin.

Seems that quite a bit of cool research has gone on since then.

Cf.: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102601823

[Vene]

This is why nature fascinates me.

[LMNO]

This is why nature disturbs me.

The more these things are made evident, the more it seems the human is unique in developing concepts of compassion, sympathy, and justice.


Which, in the large scope of things, makes them Abnormal Abberations.


Life, as a general rule, is Terrifying and Horrible.

[the other anonymous]

The more these things are made evident, the more it seems the human is unique in developing concepts of compassion, sympathy, and justice.

Which, in the large scope of things, makes them all too rare.

Fixed.

-toa,
philosophically emo

[Kai]

This is why nature disturbs me.

The more these things are made evident, the more it seems the human is unique in developing concepts of compassion, sympathy, and justice.


Which, in the large scope of things, makes them Abnormal Abberations.


Life, as a general rule, is Terrifying and Horrible.

Most humans do not even develop compassion, sympathy, and justice, and those who do fall far short of the idea.

Humans are animals, and generally amoral.

[Iason Ouabache]

Reminds me of this story:

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/news/news/1612/

Scientists from Oxford and Turin have found that certain species of caterpillars have developed the ability to use sounds to fool ants into accepting and nurturing them.

Writing in this week's Science Francesca Barbero and her colleagues describe how they used sensitive microphones to eavesdrop on Myrmica schencki ants, the nests of which are invaded by caterpillars of the rare blue butterfly Maculinea rebeli.  Somehow these caterpillars persuade the ants not just to accept them but also to treat them like royalty, even feeding their own young to the hungry butterfly larvae if food runs short.

Scientists have known for some time that chemicals come into play and that the caterpillars secrete odour molecules that make them smell like an ant, but that couldn't be the whole story because it wouldn't explain why the larvae receive such preferential treatment in the nest.  This prompted the Oxford and Italian team to wonder whether the caterpillars might also be resorting to a form of sonic subterfuge to elevate their status because the ants communicate with one another through rasping sounds produced by rubbing together the rough surfaces of parts of their abdomens.

Queen ants produce subtly different sounds to workers, and recordings from the caterpillars in the nests show that they are mimicking the noises of ant queens.

"This is the first time anyone has been able to record like this, with insects in their native environment and that are not distressed.  This is why we picked this up," explains co-author Jeremy Thomas.  "This is a wonderful example of evolution.  This blue butterfly group has a long history of a co-existence with this ant species.  Over time the caterpillars have adapted to exploit the ants by mimicking their signals, allowing the caterpillar to penetrate the nest where the ants protect and feed it."

Why do stories like this always involve ants?

[Kai]

Several reasons:

1) Ants sensu stricto (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) are eusocial and colonial insects. They have highly complex group behavior that encompasses things like fungal agriculture, aphid herding, and the like.

2) Aside from the termites (Isoptera) and the eusocial bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) there are no other insects that engage in fully social and colonial livestyles. The behavior required to sustain "agriculture" needs a social structure, in humans as in insects.

3) The reason that catepiliars and other insects can get away with this is because, on top of the social behavior, the communication of ants is almost entirely chemical. Since insect behaviors are instinctual triggers rather than learned, a particular chemical induces a particular response, and theres really nothing the ants can do about it, unless they have evolved a secondary trigger which overrides the first in certain cases, and that is rather unlikely.

So thats why you see stories like this. That, and it is very easy to liken ant colonies to a human city, making it very easy for people to relate to the social behavior and dynamics of ants. Its a "human interest story".