Science Friday - Ants

I don't particularly like ants, but I heard this story on NPR (love NPR by the way) and was fascinated by it. I know that fascinated is a strong word, but keep in mind, I am a science nerd. 

Many ants are known to be slave masters—their raiding parties steal the young from colonies of rival ants and raise the foreigners as workers in their own nest. In this case, the enslaved ants are Temnothorax curvispinosus - tiny ants that aren't much bigger than the commas on this page. Their slave masters, Protomognathus americanus, are only slightly bigger, but kidnap the slave ants and force them to care for their young. 

Biologist Susanne Foitzik said these captor ants aren’t very good at doing their own housework. So, they raid the homes of smaller ants, carry off the pupae, and raise them in their own colony (inside an acorn). Here's where the story gets good... However, instead of caring for the young captor ants, some of the slave ants grow up to become baby killing ant nannies. They kill the young by throwing them outside the acorn or by tearing them apart and leaving them to die.

This rebellion doesn’t win the slave ants their freedom. Even if it did, they wouldn’t know how to get back home (remember, they were kidnapped as pupae). However, these sabotage skills certainly have some advantages. Wiping out the bully ants’ children means fewer bully ants will be available for future raiding parties. In that sense, the slave ants protect their relatives and future generations from meeting the same fate that they did.