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Despite all its beauty, nature also has a morbid tendency. For example, there is a species of ant in Florida that picks up the skulls of other ants it has killed and decorates their nest with them, reports Phys.org.
"Add the" skull collecting ant "to the list of strange creatures in Florida," said Adrian Smith, a scientist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and North Carolina State University, who conducted a new research on the bizarre habits of this head hunter. of the insect world.
Formica archboldi It was a species first identified in 1958, and researchers immediately noticed that its nests were often littered with pieces of dismembered bodies of other ants, most commonly ant skulls jaw traps. Because ant traps have the reputation of being particularly formidable predators, researchers have not automatically assumed F. archboldi have hidden trophies to kill. The working hypothesis has long been that these ants simply had the curious habit of inheriting ancient ant nesting sites.
Satisfied with this explanation, or perhaps too frightened to consider other theories, new research on weird species is at a standstill. It was not until Smith and his team discovered the original 60-year-old research papers that described the ant F. archboldi, and his macabre behavior, finally had a second look.
"The chances were that these ant heads were not in Formica's nests by chance and that there was an interesting biology behind this natural history note," Smith said.
And it was not long before the observations revealed the terrible truth behind the curious cohabitation of the ant with the skulls of its dead enemies. F. archboldi is actually a specialized predator with adaptations that make it particularly suitable for attacking ants jaw trap. Smith and his team first noticed that F. archboldi is able to chemically mimic the signatures of trapping ants, allowing them to get closer to their prey without notice. Once they've closed, F. archboldi they then fire streams of formic acid on their opponents, which almost instantly paralyzes unfortunate victims.
Once the killing is complete, the jaw ants are brought back to F. archboldi nests and dismembered. The exoskeletons are then exposed as trophies.
Researchers still do not know what the trophy display stands for. Maybe these ants just lack cleanliness. Whatever the reason, they have more than deserved their description of "ants picking up the skull".
"Now Formica archboldi is the most chemically diverse species of ants we know, and before this work it was just a species with a strange habit of picking up the head. could be a model species to understand the evolution of chemical diversification and mimicry, "said Smith.
A video describing the behavior of this species can be viewed at the top of the article.
In relation with MNN:
What's going on with the weird headhunting behavior of this ant collecting the skull?
New research offers fascinating information about the trophy collections of this strange insect.
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