Back From the Dead

Holy smokes it's been a long time. I can't really say that I'm surprised that I've gone this long without writing - blogging isn't something that you can force, it just has to happen. It's one of those things where all the stars have to be in alignment and the creative juices have to be flowing - not trickling - we're talking Niagara. And tonight just so happens to be one of those nights. The juices are flowing, so grab your ponchos and hop on board the Maid of the Mist.

So I stumbled across an interesting article on BBC News regarding a type of ant that I hadn't heard of before - the Slavemaker ant. While the moniker is used for many different species of ants, the name pretty much speaks for itself. And while the different species of slavemaker ants use many different tactics of enslaving, the bottom line is all the same: get some poor schmuck to do all of the work for you. And here I was thinking that slavery was an invention of mankind. Now I'm not saying that there are tiny little ant plantations or tiny ant cotton fields, but it's crazy how nature works, and even scarier to think that man's slavery and ant's slavery aren't too far off from each other.

One type of ant enslavement is a form of social parasitism, or as I like to call it, the snatch-n-grab. This involves the slavemaker soldier ants raiding a nearby colony, stealing their larvae, and bringing them back to the slavemaker nest. The scent of the slavemaker colony is imprinted on the larvae and when they hatch, they will work for the new colony - they are literally born into slavery. Holy. Shit.  Imagine going into someone's home, or better yet, another country, stealing their babies, and raising them up to do your bidding.

Another type of ant enslavement is just a plain old coup d'état.  The slavemaker queen and her raiders invade another colony and during the battle, the slavemaker queen assassinates the previous queen, bathes herself in the dead queen's pheromones, and proclaims herself the leader.  The soon-to-be slave workers don't know the better (since the new queen smells like the old queen), and begin doing the new queen's bidding.  Oh. Em. Gee.

Damn nature!  You scary!