Who had Soviet Nuclear Cannibal Ants for August 2020?
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https://www.newsweek.com/cannibal-ants-soviet-nuclear-bunker-1469573
A "colony" of up to one million cannibal ants trapped in a nuclear bunker for years have escaped, scientists in Poland have said.
The ants, which had no food source other than their dead nestmates, were first discovered in 2013 were found to be solely made up of worker ants meaning they could not reproduce—how their numbers grew so large was a mystery.
In a study published in the Journal of Hymenoptera Research, researchers have now studied the colony to understand how it functioned—and installed an escape route to see if its members would leave their home given the option.
Czechowski, from the Museum and Institute of Zoology and the Polish Academy of Sciences, were carrying out a survey of bats living in an abandoned Soviet nuclear bunker when they came across the wood ants living in an ammunition bunker where nuclear weapons were once kept. The ants had no access to the outside world and appeared to have come from a nest above that was positioned over a ventilation pipe. When the ants fell down the pipe, they were entombed in the bunker.
However, after returning to the site two years later, scientists found the colony was not only still there, but that it had grown in numbers. This was despite there being no obvious food source, no heat and no light. A population estimate suggested there were hundreds of thousands, if not one million ants living in the bunker.
Ants are known to set up colonies in unusual places. Nests have previously been found in the chassis of a car and inside a wooden box in complete darkness that could only be accessed by a tiny skip at the base. However, in all other cases, the ants were able to come and go. "The masses of Formica polyctena workers trapped in the bunker had no choice," the team wrote. "They were merely surviving and continuing their social tasks on the conditions set by the extreme environment."
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That is a neat article. I love ants. I think that they are very interesting creatures.
If you are interested in a really, really, really deep discussion of ants, there is a book that I got as a gift a few years ago.
Ants - by Holldobler and Wilson
