HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT, JULY 2011
Adopting the enemy
If the army ants are more housewives stocking their larder than noble soldiers proving their mettle, what about the slave-making ants with their “wonderful” instinct, as noted by Darwin? The wars, or raids, that these ants undertake are not about getting food, at least not directly. A slave-maker colony is started when an inseminated queen of one species enters the nest of another, kills or expels the resident queen or queens, and begins to lay eggs of her own kind. Her children are then reared by the host species, which accepts them as if they were nestmates. To replenish the host workers, the slave-maker species sets out on periodic expeditions to snatch the larvae and pupae from another host colony, bearing them ...
