Reputation of ants can be envied. These hardworking insects sacrifice their own benefits for the sake of the common benefit of the colony. They live to serve their queen and take care of all the main tasks, including the care of the offspring, fee and maintain order in the anthill. But, as often often happens, not all kinds of ants are justified by their reputation. So, several species found a way to transfer all important tasks in the hands of performers - their weaker fellow. The view with the speaking name of ants-slave owners, as it turned out, specialize in the robbery of the offspring of other species. During regular raids, the slave owners attack the neighboring anthills, kill adults, and fertilized eggs carry with them. Having raised, the crumb-ants do not know who their real parents, and therefore perform orders from new owners, their kidnappers. Interestingly, in their labor task is a concern for the offspring of slave-owner ants, with the result that slave owners can become so dependent on slaves that they will not be able to feed themselves without any assistance. And yet, not all ant slaves voluntarily take their fate. Some fiercely tear into pieces offspring of their owners, throwing out the remnants of the anthill.
Ordinary insects?
Ants are ordinary insects, but they have some unique abilities. More than 10,000 famous species of ants are found around the world, they are especially common in tropical forests, where they can be up to half of all insects living in some places. Interestingly, externally ants are very similar to termites and they are quite often confused. It is possible to distinguish termit from the ant by a narrow waist of the latter - between the abdomen and the chest. Even ants have quite large heads, curved mustaches and powerful jaws. These insects belong to the detachment of the interflower, to which the wasps and bees include.
Ant usually live in structured socket communities, which can be located underground, in the mounds at the ground level or on trees. He heads the Foress Community Queen or Queen, whose main task is to postpone thousands of eggs that will provide the survival of the colony. Workers are ants (it is them most often "people are most often seen) - these are outless females, which instead of breeding are engaged in searching for food, care for the offspring of the queen, work in an anthill, protect the community and fulfill many other duties. The life of males is more relaxed, since the main goal is to mate with the queen. That's just doing this function, they may die.
Interestingly, ants communicate and cooperate with chemicals that can warn others about the danger or lead them to a food source. Usually ants feed on nectar, seeds, mushrooms or insects. Nevertheless, some species of ant tastes are rather unusual. The army of ants can hunt reptiles, birds or even small mammals.
It will be interesting for you: why ants are one of the strongest insects in the world?
In fact, there are quite a few unusual species of ants. Moreover, in nature, there are species that parasitize on ants and force them in the literal sense of this word to end. About how mushroom parasites turn ants to zombies, read in the fascinating material of my colleague Ramis Ganiev.
We, in the meantime, we will return to the ants that rebel against the dictatorship of the workers' antowners. Their size, as a rule, does not exceed 3 mm, and they live in a sheet litter of mixed leaves on the east coast of the United States and in the southern parts of Canada. In most cases, these ants do not even suspect that they are slaves. When eggs kidnapped during the raids of Rabovenalev's ants ripen and small ants appear on the world, they recognize the smell of the nest and its inhabitants and accept it as their home. In most cases, this system works well and, probably, is one of the reasons why the marshev works are working - young ants can and will recognize the smell of a slave-owner nest and take it as their own.
As the Conversation notes, from an evolutionary point of view, the rebellion of slaves in ants represents an interesting problem, since the enslaved ants do not receive direct benefits from their behavior. Since the slave owners are much more and stronger, the slaves never attack their suppressants directly, and instead aims on helpless siblings of their owners. Such a partisan strategy helps to maintain a small number of slave owners, but will never lead to the "overthrow of the ruling class" of the Rabla owners.
Evolutionary puzzle
To solve this problem, it is necessary to consider the history of the enslaved species of ants. These ants live in a variable and fragile medium, in the so-called temporary nests - usually acorns in the forest deciduous litter. A similar habitat forces ants to regularly move, and sometimes a colony is divided if more than one suitable place for the nest is found. As a result, many of these small ant communities inhabit numerous nests in close proximity to each other.
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Interestingly, the slave-owner ants make raids several times during the year and attack only one nest at a time. As a result, the chance of the fact that relatives of some enslaved workers ants will survive the attack and will continue to live in close proximity to the colony of slave owners, which entered into prison their sisters increases. Since raids are a labor-intensive task, the smaller the slave owners nearby, the less raids on the surrounding anthills and nests. Thus, rebellion, ant slaves help not help themselves, and protect their loved ones in the nest. And yet, no one knows exactly why ant slaves attack the offspring of their owners, but the result of the uprising increases the chances of the life of their relatives in neighboring nests.