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HOMICIDAL NANNIES. "Achenbach and Foitzik collected 88 colonies of the slave-making P.americanus ant that had abducted workers from three species of Temnothorax. They found that the workers clearly care for the larvae, and nearly all of them were raised until their pupated. But at that point, the slaves’ behaviour changed dramatically, taking on a more homicidal bent." https://lnkd.in/d8qZ477 View in LinkedIn

OUT OF RIDER HAGGARD'S SHE. "In Teleutomyrmex schneideri...not only has the entire worker caste been eliminated, but the brain, glands and feeding apparatus have also been reduced. The parasitic Teleutomyrmex queen spends much of her life riding on the back of the host queen while being fed by the workers of the host species.” If this was a horror movie you would not believe it. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29774232?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents View in LinkedIn

SLAVE REBELLION. "Slave ‘nannies’ will sometimes turn homicidal on their charges – something that never happens when they tend to their own young. In what’s being labelled variously as an evolutionary resistance to enslavement or a downright act of rebellion, captured worker ants will allow slavemaker young to die through neglect (dumping them in a corner and allowing mould to overcome them) or even consuming them once they reach the pupal stage." https://lnkd.in/dJrQzst View in LinkedIn

BAIT AND SWITCH. "As every ant in the colony is ‘programmed’ to obey the every whim of their queen, the colony becomes in time nothing but a proxy for the slavemaker race, as all workers are forced to care for the new brood of masters that the queen hatches. Unknowingly, they will dutifully and carefully tend to the seeds of their own demise." https://lnkd.in/dJrQzst View in LinkedIn

INFILTRATION. "In certain species, an even more insidious technique is used. During the chaos of the raid, a young slavemaker queen will infiltrate the target colony and kill the queen. Having completed this act of matronly regicide, she will then ‘impersonate’ the queen by consuming the pheromones still present in her rivals’ dead body." https://lnkd.in/dJrQzst View in LinkedIn

INSECT OTTOMANS. "Slavemaker ants will carry off all the eggs they can get their mandibles on and bring them back to their own nest. Just as the Ottoman empire once captured the young of their Christian enemies, raising them to be loyal Muslim citizens, so the young of the slave species are raised to be loyal to the their new colony." https://lnkd.in/dJrQzst View in LinkedIn

DUAL PURPOSE MESSAGES. "While the siege is underway, slavemaker workers of certain species possessing extremely swollen Dufour glands will spread their ‘propaganda’ amongst the enemy – chemicals that convince them to disperse, while continuing to incite the battle-frenzy amongst the attackers." https://lnkd.in/dJrQzst View in LinkedIn

CHEMICAL PROPAGANDA. "Having evolved independently several times across different ant families, ‘slave-making’ is a life history which makes use of the way in which ants communicate in order to coordinate raids as well as to subdue and coerce the target species with a type of ‘propaganda’." https://lnkd.in/dJrQzst View in LinkedIn

ANT WARFARE. "While ants in particular do share Homo sapiens‘ inclination towards mutual annihilation by a process startlingly similar to our own foreign invasions and wars, they may also choose to subject their invertebrate victims to a fate that some might consider ‘worse than death’. This system is also one which is not unknown within the human world: slavery." https://lnkd.in/dJrQzst View in LinkedIn

INVENTORY OF HOUSEWORK, comparing Polyergus master ants with their slaves, Formica ants. Only scouting and aggression are greater in the dominant ant species. https://lnkd.in/dBuAyKw View in LinkedIn