{"id":295656,"date":"2026-02-21T20:29:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T20:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/295656\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T20:29:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T20:29:07","slug":"kidnapped-brainwashed-enslaved-the-animal-that-steals-the-young-and-forces-them-to-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/295656\/","title":{"rendered":"Kidnapped, brainwashed, enslaved: the animal that steals the young and forces them to work"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Stealing a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/animals-that-kidnap\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">handful of mole rats<\/a> is one thing, but some ant species take kidnapping to a whole new level. On the forest floor of California\u2019s Sierra Nevada, red ants (Polyergus mexicanus) launch frenzied raids on the nests of nearby black ants (Formica accreta) and steal\u00a0hundreds\u00a0of their pupae.<\/p>\n<p>The pupae are carried back to the red ant nest, and when they hatch, the kidnappers coat them in secretions from specialised glands. This bathes the captives in the scent of the colony, fooling them into thinking they belong. From that moment on, the captives work for the red ants, maintaining their nest, tending their young and foraging for food.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Slave-making ants can\u2019t feed themselves, because their jaws are the wrong shape for foraging or processing food. Not so the captive ants, who feed their kidnappers by regurgitating food into their mouths.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The whole scenario is known as obligate social parasitism. \u2018Parasitism\u2019 because one species gains resources at the others expense. \u2018Social\u2019 because the whole colony is in on it. And \u2018obligate\u2019 because the parasite has no choice. Slave-making ants would be unable to survive without the help of the species they kidnap.<\/p>\n<p>Top image: William Cho, CC BY-SA 2.0 <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stealing a handful of mole rats is one thing, but some ant species take kidnapping to a whole&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":["post-295656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}