Animals

This parasitic ant tricks workers into committing matricide

The invading queen sprays a chemical irritant onto her victim to turn workers murderous

Small yellow worker ants surround two larger queens. Beige ant larvae are shown at the top of the image. A parasitic ant queen, facing to the right, is colored black. To her right is a brown queen that is facing the bottom of the image. Yellow workers are attending the brown queen.

A Lasius orientalis queen (large black ant on the left) approaches an L. flavus queen (large brown ant on the right) being attended by her offspring. A spray of liquid from the invading queen will send the workers into a murderous frenzy until they kill their mother.

Taku Shimada

By Erin Garcia de Jesús

This is a human-written story voiced by AI.