Parasitic Ant Queens Trick Workers to Overthrow Their Queen

In the complex and often dramatic world of ants, a new form of "regicide" has been uncovered. Researchers have discovered that some parasitic ant queens can sneak into a colony and manipulate the worker ants to turn against and kill their own queen. This previously undocumented behavior was first observed by an ant enthusiast in Japan, who captured the shocking events on camera.

The discovery was made by Taku Shimada, an ant enthusiast who has spent years studying and raising the insects. A few years ago, Shimada found a parasitic ant queen of the Lasius orientalis species in a mountainous region of Japan. He brought the queen back to his home and set up a camera to observe what would happen when he introduced her to another ant colony.

Over the course of several hours, Shimada watched as the parasitic queen approached the colony's true queen. The parasitic queen first sprayed the true queen with a substance, likely formic acid, and then quickly retreated. This prompted the worker ants, who are the true queen's daughters, to begin attacking her, biting her antennae, legs, and abdomen. Eventually, they killed the queen, leaving the throne empty for the parasitic queen to take over.

This shocking behavior, described as "like a story out of 'Game of Thrones'," has never been documented before. Previous observations of queen-killing in ants have involved direct, queen-on-queen violence, but Shimada's experiments provide the first direct evidence of a parasitic queen manipulating worker ants to do her dirty work.

The discovery provides important insights into the complex social dynamics and power struggles within ant colonies. As researchers continue to study this newfound behavior, they expect it may be more common than previously known, offering a glimpse into the Machiavellian dramas that play out in the ant world.