In ancient human civilizations, the custom of collecting enemy heads (headhunting) was not uncommon. In the animal kingdom, there is one ant that also has a headhunting habit: formica archboldi, which is distributed in the southeastern United States (Florida, Alabama and Georgia).
<h1>Headhunters! </h1>
The Florida forest ants were officially described in 1944, and surprisingly, the seemingly unremarkable Florida forest ants have a strange habit that puzzles ant experts. In 1958, experts first observed that its nest had many large-toothed ants' heads, suggesting that they could feed on large-toothed ants, and in the decades that followed, many scholars reported similar situations, and even studies pointed out that large-toothed ants were the most common prey of Florida forest ants, as evidenced by the mountain of heads and remains of large-toothed ants in nests. The Florida forest ant was also given a nickname, called the headhunter ant.
The Florida forest ant is joined by the carcasses of its hunted large-toothed raptor ants
Big-toothed ants are a very powerful type of ants, their huge jaws can be closed at a speed of 231.5 kilometers per hour, this bite speed is one of the best in the entire animal kingdom, the ants hit by their jaws are either dead or injured, even the red fire ants with outstanding combat effectiveness are far from its opponents in the same number, and what puzzles experts is how the Florida forest ants subdue the larger and better equipped large-toothed ants.
Big-toothed raptor ant
Although the big-toothed ants are powerful, they are not invulnerable, and field observations have shown that they are particularly sensitive to the chemical weapons of other ants. Therefore, experts plan to start with the formic acid spewed by the Florida forest ant to see if its formic acid is more effective than other ants. To this end, experts chose another ant, the formica pallidefulva, as an object of comparison with the Florida forest ant, which is also from the genus ant, widely distributed in North America, and the macrolodonted ant also has habitat overlap, so it is more valuable.
The experiment began, the scholar put a single Florida forest ant and a large-toothed mammoth ant into a plastic dish, let them two or two heads, and repeated the test 10 times, as did the light brown forest ant vs the large-toothed mammoth ant. Observations have shown that both species of forest ants show a strong sense of aggression against the large-toothed mammoth, either tearing the appendages of the large-toothed mammoth or climbing on the body of the macrono-toothed mammoth and spraying antic acid at the end of the abdomen to the macrono-toothed mammoth. It is worth noting that compared with another ant, Florida forest ants spray a significantly larger amount of formic acid, what kind of results does such a large amount of acid spray bring?
The Florida Forest Ant attacks the Big-toothed Ant instantly with bead-like mymic acid
In the 10 interactions between headhunters and big-toothed ants, all 10 large-toothed ants were unable to walk in plastic trays after being sprayed with acid, and 7 of the 10 were completely paralyzed and unable to stand. In contrast, the light brown forest ant has a much worse result, after being attacked by it, only one large-toothed mammoth ant cannot move, and the rest is normal. The results of the experiment showed that although the two ants had similar formic acid chemistry, the Florida forest ant was able to spew more formic acid and was far more harmful to the large-toothed ant than the other ant.
In addition, scholars have observed in the laboratory that after knocking down the large-toothed mammoth with formic acid, the Florida forest ant will bring the unmovable prey back to its nest, cut off the head of the large-toothed ant, and use the rest of the part as food, which also explains why the head of the large-toothed ant frequently appears in the nest of the wild Florida forest ant.
The headhunter nest is a trophy of war, with the head of a large-toothed ant in the middle and other insects on all sides
<h1>Pretenders? </h1>
Solving the problem of how Florida forest ants hunt large-toothed ants, another puzzling puzzle has emerged on Florida forest ants. Scholars have found that the hydrocarbons on the surface of the Florida forest ant, the pheromones that ants use to distinguish between companions and enemies, that is, identify clues, are very similar to its prey, the large-toothed mammoth ant (the left-behind macrono-toothed ant and the brown-toothed mammoth ant). In this regard, scholars have a speculation: through this chemical simulation, the Florida forest ant imitates the smell of prey, so that it can smoothly blend into the side of the big-toothed ant without attack, killing the other party by surprise.
Florida Forest Ant Worker Ant
In order to test this hypothesis, the scholars first prepared 16 colonies of brown big-toothed mammoths, and then put the Florida forest ants that were consistent with the hydrocarbons of the brown-toothed mammoths and the Florida forest ants that matched the remaining macronopathic mammoths into these 16 colonies after cold anesthesia. If the experts' conjecture is correct, the former will be mistaken for a companion by the brown big-toothed ants due to pheromone matching, and will be less attacked.
However, the results of the experiment negated this hypothesis, with 10 of the 16 colonies attacking the hydrocarbon-consorted Florida forest ants, while 9 large-toothed mammoth colonies attacked mismatched Florida forest ants, with little difference between the two. This suggests that altering the surface hydrocarbons to make them highly compatible with the big-toothed mammoth ant does little to help the Florida forest ant hunting activities.
<h1>Poor slaves controlled by slave ants</h1>
So what is the purpose of this chemical simulation? This has led scholars to speculate that a more brutal and bizarre phenomenon than headhuntering is the slavery of ants. In the ant kingdom, there is a type of ant that is lazy and lazy, does not participate in labor, and their way of survival is to enslave other ants for their own drive, which we generally call slave ants.
The Florida forest ant in this article is very unfortunately enslaved by a kind of slave ant, polyergus oligergus. Slave ants such as hummers parasitize specifically against certain ants of the genus, polyergus oligergus are limited to Florida, and the Florida forest ant is its only host.
Slave Ant: Hummer ant
How do hummer ants enslave Florida forest ants? First of all, the newborn hummer queen will sneak into the nest of the Florida forest ant, kill the forest ant queen and collect its pheromones, and coat it all over the body, so that the humpty ant queen can perfectly impersonate the host queen and give birth to her own eggs in a dignified manner, leaving the headhunter ant to be responsible for raising. After the eggs of hummer ants grow up, in order to replenish the number of slaves, they will go out to plunder the eggs of other Florida forest ant colonies and bring them back to the nest to breed a new generation of slaves, relying on this way, lazy hummer ants can maintain the development of their own community.
In the wild, scholars once dug up a colony of Hummer ants, which contained 40 Hummer worker ants and 340 Florida Forest Ant Worker Ants, all of whom were slaves to Hummer Ants, and their daily hard work was all in the service of the survival of another species.
The Hummer Ant Queen and its Headhunter Ant Slave
Let's take a look at how hummer ants loot the eggs of Florida forest ants. On July 9, 1983, scholars observed in the wild that a community of hummers attacked a large Florida forest ant colony four times in a row. First, 3 Humvee Scouts found a huge Florida Forest Ant Nest, and then the Scouts returned to their nests to inform their companions of the information.
In less than a minute, a team of 25 Hummer worker ants left the Nest and set off for the Forest Ant Nest in Florida for a raid. When the hummer ants entered the nest of the forest ant, they saw dozens of Florida forest ant worker ants hurriedly leaving the nest and hiding under the nearby leaves, some of them carrying eggs. The hummers who entered the nest soon reappeared, and after quickly bringing the stolen pupae back to their nests, the humpty ants then launched a second raid, and so on, they attacked the headhunter colony a total of 4 times.
How many pupae have poor Florida forest ants been robbed of? In the first attack, 25 hummer ants brought back 21 pupae, the second time 31 hummer ants grabbed 25 pupae, the third time also 25 pupae were taken away, the last time as many as 36 humming ants participated in the attack, but the number of pupae grabbed was not counted, according to the previous plunder efficiency, I believe that this time the loot will not be less. Scholars estimate that Florida forest ants lost a total of 80-100 pupae, and that the work was done by no more than 36 humpty ants in four consecutive operations, and repeated attacks like these are called "compound attacks" by experts.
In another example, a mere four hummer ant attacked the Florida forest ant colony, and more than 100 forest worker ants and their queens rushed out of the nest in fright, climbed up nearby plants or hid under fallen leaves, and watched the hummers grow away with their grabbed pupae. From these examples, it can be seen that even if the Florida forest ants have absolute numerical advantages, they do not dare to make a move to resist the hummer ants, and the zoology speculates that perhaps the hummer ants can release a pheromone that makes many forest ants collapse without a fight, so that they can easily carry out looting work.
Finally, let's go back and try to analyze the link between hummer ants and Florida forest ants chemical simulations. The harm of slave ants to the host has been elaborated earlier, perhaps everyone will have some doubts, the ants targeted by slave ants can only sit still, without the slightest countermeasure? In fact, this is not the case, and some previous studies have pointed out that the diversity of hydrocarbons in target ant species targeted by slave ants is much higher than that of ants that are not parasitic by slave ants. It is reasonable to speculate that these ants, which suffer from slave ants, want to increase the parasitic difficulty of slave ants by identifying the diversity and complexity of clues, for example, slave ants may be more difficult to identify their host ant species, or it is difficult to perfectly simulate the host pheromone, which is conducive to the host ants to distinguish between real companions, enslaved kinds and slave ants.
With this in mind, it is not difficult to understand that the Florida forest ant is trying its best to simulate the pheromones of the big-toothed ant, and it may want to change its odor in this way to get rid of the enslavement of the hummer ant.
Brown big-toothed mammoth ant
To summarize the story between these three types of ants, the Florida forest ants face the powerful large-toothed ants, use chemical weapons to achieve David's counterattack on Goliath, and thus become a rare headhunter in the ant kingdom, but they themselves are also targeted by more terrifying slave ants, and are trapped in the enslavement and manipulation of humpty ants without knowing it. Of course, even ants will not be willing to be slaves forever, and under the pressure of slave ants, the motivation to get rid of slavery has become a driving factor stimulating the evolution of host ants, all of which once again proves the magical side of nature.
Readers should not think that the victim in the text, the big-toothed ant, is a good bully, this ant has killed the red fire ant in the experiment, interested readers can read: red fire ant biological control: marching ants are beaten to fall flowers and water, large-toothed fierce ants can win the red fire ants
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