An ant colony is a society, but in essence it is different from what we usually call society.
Because general society is composed of countless individuals. Although these individuals have clear division of labor, they are essentially combined for the interests of individuals. However, the ant colony is different. The ant colony is a kind of creature with the strongest social nature. Each individual who forms the ant colony has no self-consciousness, but only a group consciousness. Everything they do is for the population. Survival and reproduction are the most important for living organisms, but as female ants, the worker ants are willing to give up their ability to give up their fertility, concentrate on serving ants, taking care of their cubs and looking for food for the ant colony. Soldier ants 's responsibility is to defend the ant hole and launch an attack on other ant colonies. However, whenever a war occurs, the ones rushing ahead are not those strong soldier ants, but those elderly and weak ants ants .
The reason why old and weak ants charge forward is not because someone forces them to do this, but because they know that they have the least contribution to the ant colony, so they are willing to be cannon fodder.
It is precisely because of this strong sense of group that ants can become one of the most survivable animals in nature. However, although ants are very social, not every type of ants is rich enough. For example, there is a type of ants with extremely single social structure. They do not have the worker ants responsible for serving the queen and taking care of the cubs. They adopt a relatively "barbaric" survival strategy, which is to enslave other ants, so we call this type of ants " slave ants ". Slave ants are not the name of a certain type of ant. There are many species of slave ants who know how to enslave other ants in the world.
Slave ant queen will not hatch a variety of different ant eggs like other ants. They only produce one type of ant, that is, soldier ant.
The soldiers who hold slave ants are stronger than ordinary soldiers, and the E tribe is larger and more powerful. They do not do anything else, and they never even eat by themselves, because the huge E tribe makes them unable to eat independently and must rely on the feeding of "slaves". They only have one thing to do every day, that is, to capture other ant holes. It is easy to capture ant hole, but how do slave ants make other ants willing to serve themselves? There are two general slave strategies for slave ants. The first is to control them by simulating the pheromone of enslaved ants. The reason why an ant colony can run in an orderly manner is inseparable from the pheromone secreted by the queen, so as long as this pheromone can be simulated, the purpose of controlling this ant can be achieved.
Of course, it is not easy to successfully simulate the pheromones released by other ants, so slave ants have another slavery strategy, which is to grab ant eggs.
After successfully occupying an ant hole, the soldier ant will kill all the ants inside, and then move the ant eggs back to their nests. After these ant eggs hatch, they receive pheromones from slave ants, so they form a certain memory and feel at ease to be slaves here. Since slave ants have such skills, why can't they dominate the ant world? Think about it, slave ants are so powerful and do not require any labor. They only need to constantly hatch soldiers and start wars. Logically speaking, other types of ants should have been all the efforts of slave ants. But why are millions of years still a minority among ants?
This is a very interesting question. For a long time, entomologists also had questions about this issue. It was not until later that entomologists discovered that in the ant holes of slave ants, the enslaved ants were playing a staging in the infernal tragedy.
After conducting a lot of observation and research, researchers discovered a common phenomenon, that is, in the ant holes of slave ants, the enslaved ants intentionally destroy the ant eggs of slave ants, and sometimes even directly kill the hatched larvae. This is not an accidental move. In the long run, about two-thirds of the descendants of slave ants die at the hands of their own "slaves".Why do such behavior occur? There is no definite conclusion yet.
In theory, enslaved ants have been completely controlled by slave ants, especially those captured ant eggs, who stay in the slave ants holes as soon as they are born. They should think that they are members of slave ants and should not commit infanticide behavior, but this is the fact.
Although it is still unclear what the reason behind this behavior is, this behavior does effectively control the population of slave ants and gain space for the survival of other ants populations. This is indeed like an infernal Affairs staged in the ant world, and it has been staged for a long time. We can only say that nature is really too wonderful. All things in the world are mutually reborn and restrained. Even the most powerful form of life will always be subject to some form of constraint. Even the weak form of life must have its own survival strategy.
Why do such behavior occur? There is no definite conclusion yet.
In theory, enslaved ants have been completely controlled by slave ants, especially those captured ant eggs, who stay in the slave ants holes as soon as they are born. They should think that they are members of slave ants and should not commit infanticide behavior, but this is the fact.
Although it is still unclear what the reason behind this behavior is, this behavior does effectively control the population of slave ants and gain space for the survival of other ants populations. This is indeed like an infernal Affairs staged in the ant world, and it has been staged for a long time. We can only say that nature is really too wonderful. All things in the world are mutually reborn and restrained. Even the most powerful form of life will always be subject to some form of constraint. Even the weak form of life must have its own survival strategy.
