{"id":42562,"date":"2025-11-17T17:34:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/42562\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T17:34:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:34:11","slug":"watch-an-invading-queen-ant-trick-workers-into-killing-their-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/42562\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch an invading queen ant trick workers into killing their mother"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI was so astonished and lost my voice when I read the blog,\u201d says Takasuka.<\/p>\n

While other examples of offspring turning against their mothers have been documented in the animal kingdom, this report represents a new pattern of matricide in nature, one in which the original \u201cfamily\u201d does not gain anything by killing their mother, says Takasuka. In this case, it\u2019s only the parasitic ant, which is neither the children nor the mother, that receives \u201call benefits from matricide,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

How the drama unfolded<\/p>\n

Queens of\u00a0some ant species\u00a0<\/a>are known to invade and take over colonies by directly killing the host queen, or by turning workers against her in some ways. However, exactly why the workers betray their own queen mother was unknown.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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To find that out, Shimada collected a queen ant of\u00a0Lasius orientalis,\u00a0an ant species also known as \u201cbad-smell ant\u2019\u2019 known to parasitize other ant species, from a field with his son and left it overnight in a small container with individuals of another ant species,\u00a0Lasius flavus.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This simulates what usually happens in the wild when, before entering the nest, the intruder queen would usually acquire the odor of the colony to go unnoticed once inside it. Some species, for example, do it by rubbing their body against that of workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI was so astonished and lost my voice when I read the blog,\u201d says Takasuka. While other examples…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[24493,24461,9,24,63,24494,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-42562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-animal-behavior","9":"tag-ants","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-nyc","13":"tag-queen-ant","14":"tag-queens","15":"tag-queens-headlines","16":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}