en.wikipedia.orgPosted Apr 21, 2021, 7:40 AM UTC
The queens of this species seek out a Lasius niger worker ant, to first kill in order to gain the worker ant's scent and then to discreetly sneak inside a Lasius niger nest. Once inside the Lasius umbratus queen finds the Lasius niger queen, and kills her. The worker ants will care for the new queen's larvae and slowly the colony will be made up of only Lasius umbratus individuals.
dat efficiency of replacing whole colony with its own kind, with just two kills.
What did you just call that worker ant?
wat?
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I can't tell if this is sarcaam... Niger is Latin for black. The "n-word' in question has two 'g's.
There was a colony in my yard where the exact same thing happened, but the worker ants were not happy and this led to days and nights of protests by Ant-ifa
Wait till fly-sis joins the fight
👍🏻
she's a killer queen
Killer queen has already infiltrated that nest
「KIRA QUEEN: BAITSA DUSTO」
Gunpowder, gelatine!
Dynamite with a laser beam.
Ant conspiracy theories!
There is an imposter..... among us
Queen kinda sus ngl
Open your eyes, people!
A Song of Ice and Fire Ants
This would have been a better ending....
This is now head canon
If the ending ever comes.
I think he was referring to the HBO version but I also think we’ll be bowing down to our ant overlords before George RR Martin knocks out two more books.
Luckily enough, The Winds of Winter is probably going to release (like a 1.5% chance). Preferably this year. As for A Dream of Spring, that is going to come after the heat-death of the universe.
The ants will take over and become the next dominant species on Earth before GRRM finishes the next book. The final book won't come out till after the sun expands to Mars' orbit.....
Sure, when an ant does it it's a fascinating nature fact. I try the same thing and suddenly I'm "under arrest" and "banned from Dairy Queen".
“Ma’am! You can’t just kill the general manager and start giving birth to ‘replacement workers’! If you could, corporate would have done that a long time ago!”
Hitant
i could be a great merger of the two franchises.
"The queen is dead!"
".... Oh well"
"Long live the queen!"
Yep pretty much.
Some ant queens will do anything for power. Even kill and use the scent of a corpse of a worker ant to take on an established ant queen. Hard life being an ant queen. Hard death for worker ants. Why does the working class always ended up being used by the elite class?
Worker ants need to seize the means of production!
long live the proletariant!
Because we are an extension of their influence in the world. Individually we mean nothing to them of course, but they affect change by dangling their objectives in front of our faces, which they often disguise as being beneficial for us when it's really the exact opposite.
Just face it, we're all pawns in their game of life.
How on earth did they discover this?
You can see it yourself if you pay attention. I see them very often in July, carrying a dead worker in their mandibles, trying to get inside a nest. And you know, you can replicate that in captivity as well. Lasius umbratus is quite metal, she straight up chops that poor queen's head off.
Women am i right?
Sus
we need a new sim ants
So like empires of the undergrowth?
oh cool thanks for the suggestion
This ant queen is being sus.
There are entire species that never establish colonies of their own. They just take over existing ones
There's a more brutal version where soldier ants attack a nest , rout the workers to get access to the larvae and puppae, and bring them back to work as slaves.
Implying that worker ants aren't pretty much slaves already.
Worker ants actually run the colony. Queens have offspring but they are at the whims of the workers. If the workers reject a queen at any time, they will straight up starve her and then dismember her.
I saw such raid twice in my life and they're incredible. Poor F. fusca don't even fight, they just give in and wait for the raiders to be done looting.
Wow. Ants are bastards.
Well done 47
In most cases, these species are in a very closely-related genus, and often evolved from the host species via a different queen morph, as some species produce both regular alate queens, "budding" queens, and so on.
This is also common amongst slave-raiding ants. As I recall, Polyergus, as a genus, is polyphyletic and the species within usually evolved from their host Formica species or a very close relative.
Also, L. umbratus queens are entirely unable to found a colony on their own: many have tried, including myself. Some have had success providing closely-related late-stage brood from related genera such as Formica oelr Camponotus, but it is relatively rare for it to work.
many have tried, including myself
There she is officer! That’s the ant that killed our queen!
But you tried with L. niger workers, right? I had numerous successful colonies started that way. If you need some tips, I can give you a foolproof trick.
That's some metal gear skills right there. Sneaking past thousands and thousands of ants to kill their queen.
Infiltration, impersonation and finally integration.
They don't always make it. Often they're caught and put on trial by the colony they've tried to invade. They are then known as the Defend Ants.
The door is right there, take the upvote and bug off
That's not exactly how ant trials work but I'm somewhat of a ped-ant on the topic.
I know you can evict ten ants when their contract specifies no more that five at a time
I object to these puns, your honor!
Disappointed you didn’t say “bug off” instead
Good point. Fixed.
This is awful, yet awesome.
Just the response I AntIcipated
Happy cake day, wild man!
They’re caught by the Ant-i Ants
I now imagine an ant queen in a cartoon box crawling around the nest.
Yes.. and the alert sound, and the MGS music is playing in my head now. What have I done to myself
Ant!?.. ANT!?.. AAAANNNTTT!?
Huh?
Whose six-legged footprints are these?!
That’s like something out of a novel about MI6 or Mossad or maybe the KGB. The CIA wouldn’t do this, they’d just hire other ants who’d take the money and run
Then impregnation.
She's not from the hive so after integration I'd add another step. Assimilation.
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A hind D?
It’s on-site procurement
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Today we finally learn the backstory of Decoy Octopus' mentor, Decoy Ant