Biologist E.O. Wilson once wrote that "ants are the most warlike of all animals," noting that clashes between ant colonies dwarfed the human battles at Waterloo and Gettysburg. But sometimes ant ...

For some would-be ant queens, the easiest way to take over a colony is to dupe its worker ants into committing regicide. The scientist E.O. Wilson once wrote that ants are the most warlike of all ...

Ants are among the most successful creatures on Earth, with an estimated 20 quadrillion individuals spread across almost every habitat. They form highly organised colonies that function like complex ...

Signals from other workers can tell ants when and where to fan out and search for food. Public Domain Like a brain, an ant colony operates without central control. Each is a set of interacting ...

In the forests of California’s Sierra Nevada, nature takes a dark, cunning turn. There’s a species of red ant, Polyergus mexicanus, that doesn’t just fight its neighbours. It kidnaps not a few, but ...

Ant pupae that are fatally sick don’t hide their condition; instead, they release a special scent that warns the rest of the colony. This signal prompts worker ants to open the pupae’s cocoons and ...