Ant Slavery

Slavery the act has been denounced the world over and abolished in many modern countries. Most people would view the act of slavery as something evil that only humans could dream up.

Well it seems humans were beat to this act by a few million years

Meet the Slave Maker Ant
Formica Sanguinea


A newly mated queen Slave maker ant does not make her own nest. Instead, she will either fake death and let herself be dragged to the enemy queen by soldier ants

After she gets into the queen's chambers, the Slave maker queen will kill the enemy queen. She then will smother herself in the other queen's scent. The workers will think that the Slave maker ant queen is their queen, and tend to the eggs she lays. Because a Slave maker queen produces only soldier ants, she needs the captured colony's workers to feed her soldiers, for they cannot feed themselves

The first ant workers that come with the nest are her first "slaves," but as the population of Slave maker ants grows, the queen will need more "slaves" to collect food and take care of the colony.

To acquire the needed workers, the soldiers and even some of the "enslaved" ants will attack another colony. The raiding party will either slaughter or chase away the adults, and steal the eggs and larvae of the raided colony.

And thus the ants are forever doomed to slavery under the rule of their Slave maker queen. They can only survive by conquering other colonies to steal their babies for new slaves.

He may think humans are the dominant species on earth. But what makes us dominant our numbers? If you put every human on one side a huge scale and every ant on the other side the would weigh the same. Ants make up a amazing 10% of the bio mass on the plant with termites making up another 10%.

Well I just thought I share this info on a very interesting Ant. I all too often hear people talk about how bad humans are we kill go to war make slaves etc.... But people should understand that animals were doing this stuff long before humans were even around.

I dont think we should be like the ants though but it just shows a point all animals that live in complex societies go to war, kill, fight.

Just be happy Ants dont have nukes

www.denverhughes.net...

askabiologist.asu.edu...

Wow, This thread has changed the way i think about ants! I used to only think of them as People when u would raid ant hills............Practice for my Plan to "TAKE OVER THE WORLD"
lol jkin ///thx for info Shadow

Ants are really quite interesting IMHO

In our view, the competitive edge that led to the rise of the ants as a world-dominant group is their highly developed, self-sacrificial colonial existence. It would appear that socialism really works under some circumstances. Karl Marx just had the wrong species

Heres another role Ants beat us too, the suicide bomber

The workers of a species of Camponotus of the saundersi group

These ants are anatomically and behaviorally programmed to be walking bombs. Two huge glands, filled with toxic secretions, run from the bases of the mandibles all the way to the posterior tip of the body. When the ants are pressed hard during combat, either by enemy ants or by an attacking predator, they contract their abdominal muscles violently, bursting open the body wall and spraying the secretions into the foe.

These guys are the orignal suicide bombers there like little walking chemical time bombs.

Actually, Ants are very very interesting. Esp. the Siafu Ants. In fact DARPA has studied ant and bee colonies as a basis for future warefare systems (ie swarm attacks by nanobots etc.)

Well... Ants are jerks.

Originally posted by Flinx
Well... Ants are jerks.

Too funny Flinx, also great Avatar I love that picture

Very cool info FredT swarms of nanobots or mircobots would be very scary. What good would a machine gun do to stop something like that. We would need whole new weapons to even hope to deal with a weapon like that

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
[Very cool info FredT swarms of nanobots or mircobots would be very scary. What good would a machine gun do to stop something like that. We would need whole new weapons to even hope to deal with a weapon like that

Yeah, maybe a focuse EMP gun, or your own nanobots. Detection would be a problem. DARPA has also looked at mechanical ants to crawl down shafts into bunkers etc. Pretty scary IMHO.

Originally posted by FredT
Yeah, maybe a focuse EMP gun, or your own nanobots.

Or "flamethrower" which spews out glue.

DARPA has also looked at mechanical ants to crawl down shafts into bunkers etc. Pretty scary IMHO.

I think they have studied many kind of small robots which could be programmed to crawl to enemy position and explode themselves.

BTW, if I remember right Terminator 2 Ultimate Edition's bonuses had something about "crawling bomb-robots" which were designed for that battle scene at start of movie. (but were left out)

Originally posted by E_T
BTW, if I remember right Terminator 2 Ultimate Edition's bonuses had something about "crawling bomb-robots" which were designed for that battle scene at start of movie. (but were left out)

The story boards in the extreem edition showed an entry to the factory that produced the terminators and the time machine. that would have been a pretty cool addition to the movie IMHO

Well I know every military buff loves to speculate on the strategic implications of Nanobot, I got to disappoint you but we're probably not going to see them in our lifetime but you never know(My opinion on the Nanobot issue however changes all the time last month I was thinking Nanobots will be here at the end of the Decade now I believe we are not going to see them for a long time).... Microbot(Bots that are mesurable in Microns not Angstroms) will be here much sooner if not already and they can do almost as much as nanobots and are still pretty hard to detect too.

I am an ant keeper.I have a colony of slave makers Formica Sanguinea.I also have Camponotus Cruentatus and Lasius Emarginatus.

first of all,the photo you used is not one of Formica Sanguinea!
here's photos of them

Formica Sanguinea

sanguinea queens are built for battle,they are high off the ground,have a small abdomen which allows them to be mobile,and has powerful jaws.they choose a Serviformica nest to raid (a formica fusca nest is often the target of the sanguinea queen).the queen first kills a few workers to gain the same colony odour and then goes into the nest and kills the queen.the fusca workers take care off the sanguinea's eggs,larvae and cocoons until the sanguinea workers are born.a sanguinea colony often raids other formica nests to steal their cocoons which will be born in the sanguinea colony.

they only kill the workers of the targeted nest if the defend themselves which they do very rarely.

they are not slaves,they where born in the sanguinea colony and act as part of the sanguinea colony,but the term of "slave" is wrong

[edit on 21-8-2004 by DarkSide]

Stealing babies of a different type and making them work in your colony, I say thats as about as close to slavery as you could get. But I guess thats all up to opinion.

Since you have experence with these Ants DarkSide I wanted to ask something. I was watching a show about Slave Maker Ants and it showed the sanguinea queen seem like she fake her death and she was then dragged to the Oueen of the colony.

Why did the ants bring what they thought was a dead enemy queen to their own queen?

Also have you ever seen the workers of a species of Camponotus of the saundersi group in action? Which by I mean them making their little chemical reaction.

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
Since you have experence with these Ants DarkSide I wanted to ask something. I was watching a show about Slave Maker Ants and it showed the sanguinea queen seem like she fake her death and she was then dragged to the Oueen of the colony.

Nature is the ultimate in brutal IMHO. But looking at it another way the Sanguinea is a ultimate Darwinean warrior. It has adapted itself for survival

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
Stealing babies of a different type and making them work in your colony, I say thats as about as close to slavery as you could get. But I guess thats all up to opinion.

Since you have experence with these Ants DarkSide I wanted to ask something. I was watching a show about Slave Maker Ants and it showed the sanguinea queen seem like she fake her death and she was then dragged to the Oueen of the colony.

Why did the ants bring what they thought was a dead enemy queen to their own queen?

Also have you ever seen the workers of a species of Camponotus of the saundersi group in action? Which by I mean them making their little chemical reaction.

I never heard of sanguinea queens doing that,they have a very similar chemical "language" to the slave species,and most formica species are polygynous which means a colony can have multiple queens.maybe they bring it in to have a new queen or maybe they think it's dead andbring it in to eat it.ants are also scavengers.also physical contact with the workers allows the queen to gain their colony odour.

No those camponotus don't live in europe,and I never saw them.All I know about them is that they blow up they're abdomen and that makes the formic acid go all over the place



[edit on 21-8-2004 by DarkSide]

Yeah its quite amazing the way it has evolved. I just hope there isnt any Alien races out there in the Universe that evolved along the same path. That would be a scary thought aliens comming to steal human babies to raise as their own slave race.

Though it might make a good book or movie

Originally posted by DarkSide


No those camponotus don't live in europe,and I never saw them.All I know about them is that they blow up they're abdomen and that makes the formic acid go all over the place

[edit on 21-8-2004 by DarkSide]

Yeah, I have only read about those camponotus ants before never seen any footage of them in action. That must be something to see they make the ultimate sacrfice for their colony.

wow....this is some seriously interesting stuff....i cant believe i,ve never heard of it before...

oh, and about this...

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
I just hope there isnt any Alien races out there in the Universe that evolved along the same path.

That would be a scary thought aliens comming to steal human babies to raise as their own slave race.

Though it might make a good book or movie

the movie aliens is pretty similar, although they didnt steal babies to use as workers....they stole adults to use as human incubators

I have always found ants fascinating, when I was a child I used to dig up nests and replant them into large sweet jars (the really big ones) and cover the outside in paper so as to encourage them to re-build their nest and when you removed the paper you could see all the different chambers and passages and watch them at work and going about their lives.

I know it seems a bit cruel to do that now! But it was very interesting and educational.. One of the more memorable sights I ever saw was a very long line of ants carrying eggs from one chamber to another along a tunnel, and there was actually one ant, with it's back pressed up against the wall, looking like it was checking or counting the eggs as they were carried past. I know it sounds a little far fetched but it is true and has always stuck in my mind since. Because no matter what it was that it was doing, it was doing something.. and that requires a certain degree of intelligance...

I used to spend hours watching them, even putting a recently dead fly or someting near a nest and observing how one would find the food and then 'report back to base' with more ants coming out and cutting it up and carrying it back.. It is fascinating if you have the time to watch because they are so much more intelligent and organised then you can ever appreciate without studying them. If I had more time now in my adult life I would definatly devote some time to studying them.

Urn I have always considered the Aliens movies to have the best and most interesting Alien design in any movie.

The Queen and warrior class just great. They whole having to incubate their own babies in another host organism. Even the fact of the Alien would be sort of a Hybrid taking on characteristics of the host from which it hatched. As was seen in Alien3 with a dog as a Host rather then a Human.

Man I hope real Aliens are nothing like them. Alien and Aliens were some of the last movies to give me nightmares.

ShadowXIX....agreed, i've always loved that series of movies, and also collected as many aliens (as well as aliens vs. predator) comics i could get my hands on when i was a teen-ager...

one of the coolest comics i found was a two issue mini-series (if you can even call it a mini series) called "aliens vs. predator duel", in which an alien empregnates a predator (thus taking on the predators attributes...dreads and all) and is a virtually unstoppable killing machine....very cool...

the scary thing about those aliens i find, is that the insect-hive hierarchy, idea would seem to be a vey plausable evolutionary develpment in my mind...

[edit on 21-8-2004 by Urn]