Sick young ants release a smell to tell worker ants to destroy them to protect the colony from infection, scientists said Tuesday, adding that queens do not seem to commit this act of self-sacrifice.

Entomologist Jessica Purcell calls the learned behavior “a new height of exploitation” Getty Parasitic queen ants infiltrate rival ant colonies and trigger workers to kill their own queen The takeover ...

Matthew Sparks receives funding from a PhD studentship through an EPSRC UKRI Doctoral Training Partnership between Swansea University and Rentokil Initial under the name 'Characterisation and ...

For some would-be ant queens, the easiest way to take over a colony is to dupe its worker ants into committing regicide. The scientist E.O. Wilson once wrote that ants are the most warlike of all ...

Move over, Game of Thrones—ants can turn armies against their leaders and use subterfuge to take over entire kingdoms, too. This chilling discovery did not originate with a professional scientist, but ...

Queens of some ant species have evolved an unusually hostile mode for colony takeover: they infiltrate colonies of other ant species and manipulate the worker ants into killing their own queen — their ...

The black parasitic ant tricks the workers into attacking their amber queen. Current Biology / Takasuka et al. Ants are no strangers to violence. Sometimes, an outsider queen will attack a colony’s ...

All ants came from one mother. When the queen lays eggs, her daughters, the worker ants, care for them with utmost devotion and pass down the same genes to the next generation. When a parasitic ant ...

The parasitic Lasius orientalis queen (left) enters a Lasius flavus nest and moves toward the resident queen (right) to release her chemical spray. (Image: Keizo Takasuka/Kyushu University) Deep ...

As for Renée, she’s just as excited that Bridget’s relatable diary entries are being memorialized. “I think she’s much cuter than me,” the 56-year-old teased of the statue to BBC News, before ...

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