Some baby ants don’t ask for help when they contract deadly infections — they ask to be killed.
Terminally ill worker ant pupae actively emit a “find me and destroy me” chemical signal, prompting other workers to eliminate them, behavioral ecologist Sylvia Cremer and colleagues report December 2 in Nature Communications. This final altruistic act may be an attempt to save the colony from contamination and ensure its survival.
“Just as cells in a body coordinate to maintain the health of the whole organism, individual ants work collectively to protect the colony,” says Cremer, of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria in Klosterneuburg.
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