When I was still at university I set up an anthill between two sheets of glass, so that I could observe the behavior of ants in their daily activities. The first species I used was the fire ants (which are endemic in my country), because in spring it is easy to find young queens of this species trying to build their anthills in local gardens, which can be found by the small mounds of earth they removed when digging their underground niches.

For a few weeks, the fire ant`s queen laid her eggs and took care of the few larvae that emerged, until the first worker ants appeared and started collecting food, digging more galleries and taking care of the new larvae. They even created garbage dumps, digging cavities that they filled with waste and then closed off, isolating them from the rest of the colony. All very interesting, and already well known to biologists.

Then, one day, I found a queen ant of another species, still possessing its wings, larger in size and lighter in color than the fire ants I was already raising. Without thinking too much about the possible consequences I put it in the same glass container where the fire ant`s colony was thriving, to see what would happen. This new queen immediately sought out the other end of the container and dug a gallery, closing off the entrance and isolating herself from the rest of the environment.

Over the next few days, the new queen laid her own eggs and began to raise the larvae. But before long, the workers of the fire ants discovered the new queen’s nest and tried to penetrate it by coming from the top, digging an access tunnel as shown below:

I watched as they reached the cavity dug by the new queen and tried to penetrate it, but then she positioned herself at the opening of the tunnel dug by the fire ants and decapitated those who tried to invade her nest, one by one. Five to six fire ants died in quick succession.

After this failed attempt the fire ants gave up their attack for a while, and the new queen once again closed the access tunnel they had dug. For the next two or three days all the ants seemed to go about their own business, ignoring each other. And then something surprising happened: The fire ants started digging a perfectly horizontal tunnel at a depth slightly greater than the bottom of the new queen’s nest cavity, aimed directly at it as can be seen below. And this tunnel was perfectly straight, unlike all the other galleries they had dug so far.

This new tunnel reached exactly the lowest point of the new queen’s nest, right where her larvae were. Through it, the fire ants managed to capture all the “enemy” larvae, without the new queen being able to show any reaction. A few weeks later the new queen died (probably from starvation) alone.

After kidnapping and killing the larvae of the new queen, the fire ants completely closed the attack tunnel and returned to their normal activities, indicating that the tunnel was built for the specific purpose of destroying the rival species. Over the course of a few more months, the ant`s nest grew and ended up taking up all the available space in the container, thus I decided to release the ants so they could look after themselves.

I never thought that simple ants could be so determined, clever and evil.

I read about a naturalist who pour out a teaspoon of honey near an ant hill. He observed an ant finding it , returning to the hive and a few minutes later a 100 or so ants showed up to take it away. A day or so later he poured out a few tablespoons of honey and waited until one ant discovered it and returned to the hive. Shortly after several hundred and showed up to take it away.

A week later he poured out the rest of the jar. A single and discovered it and just a bit later what looked like the entire hive showed up to take it away.

Somehow the scout that discovered the honey knew how convey how many troops would be needed for the job of taking away the honey.