Scientists said the new species of ant was"particularly prone to self-sacrifice when threatened by enemy arthropods as well as intruding researchers”
Woe is the insect that crosses the path of the Colobopsis explodens ant.
Self-sacrifice was carried out between minor workers, the survey.
When attacked, individual ants "explode", releasing their toxic, yellow guts all over their invader while locked in one-on-one combat, according to a new study. Indeed, it's the kind of Borg-like collective behavior that can only emerge among super-social organisms. It's a final fatal act for our exploding protagonist, but the ant is truly going out in a blaze of glory; by deploying this form of chemical warfare, the ant does its part to protect the colony.
Scientists have known about exploding ants for over a hundred years.
The ants' peculiar behavior in battle was first described in 1916, but no new species had been cataloged since 1935, according to their study, which was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.
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"It is still not clear why they are doing this, but we already discovered several new species of very interesting fungi that are growing on this foliage". They were found to be "particularly prone to self-sacrifice" as a defence and would even detonate when the intruding researchers approached.
Alice Laciny, an entomologist with the Natural History Museum in Vienna, and project researcher told National Geographic that the lethal goo smells bizarrely similar to curry.
While minor workers blow themselves up, other exploding ant castes perform different defensive duties. The researchers consider C. explodens to be a model species of exploding ant, which means it will now serve as a reference point, or an exemplar, for future research. "The observations and experiments conducted on the newly described species have laid important groundwork for future research that will uncover even more details about these enigmatic explosive insects". Take the "doorkeeper", for example. A group known as major workers did not explode as frequently, but used their enlarged, plug-shaped heads to barricade the nesting entrances as intruders advanced on the colony. Honestly, this thing looks like a reject from sci-fi concept art.
"While the exploding ants play a dominant role in rainforests, their biology still holds a number of secrets", researchers wrote in a news release.
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