Speaking of ant larvae, it is actually not simple.
Certain ant larvae play a crucial role in strengthening the cohesion of the entire ant colony in the complex societies into which they are born. Even these ant larvae have unique functions and social hierarchies. Without the presence of larvae, some ant colonies would not be able to survive normally.
Ant larvae resemble worms and give the impression that they can only passively accept the care of adult ants. They do not even have tentacles and may not be able to interact with their surroundings.
However, in fact, all this is an illusion.
Some ant larvae can signal to adult ants that they are hungry by a unique way of rocking or rolling their bodies! Some ant larvae, such as bullet ants, can even stand upright. Despite being legless, some ant larvae are actually mobile and can crawl towards insects or worms captured by adults.
In addition, ant larvae also hide unusual physical characteristics. For example, leafcutter ant larvae have elongated heads that are ideal for feeding, and the adults tear the mites apart and present them to the larvae. Leafcutter ant larvae use their elongated heads to penetrate the mite's body and absorb the nutrients inside.
The larvae of Lephithoracus ants have a complementary function. Their abdomen has a unique structure that acts as a food basket, allowing them to store prey.
Many larval ants have body hairs covering their bodies, and these hairs also serve different functions. In some larvae, the hairs act like Velcro, allowing the larvae to be easily transported by workers. The body hairs of the young fierce ants have hooks at the ends that the adult ants can hang on the walls of the nest as a way of organizing and timing feeding.
Not only do these body hairs act as hooks, they also help the young ants communicate by sensing vibrations.
In addition to hair, some ant larvae can also communicate through vocal organs. Some leafcutter ant larvae have hardened pupal shells and specialized organs that help them make calls. Adult ants typically communicate using chemical signals, but the pupa's tough outer skin may block pheromone secretion, encouraging young ants to communicate using sound. Interestingly, it is usually the larvae of higher social status that make the noise because lower-ranking larvae are usually unable to make sounds.
Some young ants have physical characteristics that even benefit the entire colony. Some larvae can spin silk around the pupa, and adult ants can use the silk to build ant nests. Most of the larvae have this skill, which shows that there is also a clear division of labor among the larvae.
Meanwhile, when floods hit, certain ant colonies use the natural buoyancy of their young to help save the entire colony. In order to survive floods, these ants will join their bodies together to form a floating raft, and the larvae that float more easily often serve as the bottom of the raft. Although the mortality rate of the larvae is higher, it saves the entire colony.
The behavior of some larvae appears to be even more bizarre than their little-known physical characteristics.
In some colonies, young ants often serve as the "communal stomach." This is due to the thin waist of adult ants, which typically can only digest liquid food. Young ants, on the other hand, can eat insects instead of adult ants, and then produce nutrient-rich liquid food that the adult ants can eat.
Young ants process their food in different ways. Some young ants use their saliva to digest insects and then regurgitate the food to adult workers, who then feed this food to the queen. These foods are essential for the queen to lay eggs.
Some young ants help adult ants process food in slightly different ways, such as workers relying on larvae to soften prey. The worker ants will first dismember the fruit fly and then place the small hard body parts into the young ants' mouths, where there are troughs dedicated to storing food. Young ants secrete saliva onto their food to digest and soften prey organs and tissues. Sometimes, the larvae will pierce the food with their mandibles and inject digestive enzymes into it to speed up the digestion process. Finally, the worker ants absorb the soft tissue while leaving some for the young to eat.
Sometimes, young ants provide help to adults in horrifying ways. Some ants will pierce the abdominal ducts of young ants to suck blood to survive, just like vampires. These ants prey on large centipedes, but are not always successful, so biologists believe their blood-sucking behavior is an adaptation to help the adults replenish nutrients. The ants also squeeze the necks of their young to extract edible saliva.
Some ant groups also behave similarly. They squeeze the rear end of the young ants, forcing the young ants to secrete milky white droplets, which are rich in nutrients.
Dead young ants can also be eaten as food, as long as they did not die from an infectious disease. In more extreme cases, when food is scarce, young ants are often killed and eaten. It's like a readily available protein bread for the ant colony. If the queen is in danger of starvation, she will eat the larvae or pupae.
Due to their important role in providing food, in some colonies the young actually control the colony's ability to reproduce. Because the queen needs the protein provided by the young ants to lay eggs, the more young ants around her, the stronger her egg-laying ability.
In addition, pharaoh ant larvae can actively choose what type of food to provide to their adults so that no nutrients are wasted. They will choose to give nutrients to a mature queen in the breeding season rather than an immature queen. Chemical signals help them assess the queen's reproductive status.
Young ants also regulate reproduction in other ways. Worker ants of some species can normally produce offspring on their own, but often stop reproducing when they are at the queen's side caring for the eggs. While worker ants lay eggs that look almost identical to those laid by the queen, the young ants prompt the workers to delay egg laying: while the workers are surrounded by eggs laid by the queen, they continue to lay eggs as usual. But when the young emerge, the workers stop laying eggs.
The most mysterious behavior of young ants is cannibalism. Young ants sometimes eat other larvae. For a social species where collaboration and self-sacrifice are the norm, this is a rare act of overt selfishness. This behavior usually occurs in larger ant colonies, which are groups of ants that are not closely related, sometimes with thousands of different families. Young ants are more likely to eat distant relatives than close relatives, and eliminating these unrelated larvae can help their family take over the colony. This is really a dark and cruel palace battle drama.
Research has found that in ant nests, cannibalism rarely occurs among young ants that are relatively close to each other. This shows that young ants are indeed able to distinguish between close and distant relationships, assess their surrounding environment, and respond differently according to different social contexts. Furthermore, male larvae are more likely to engage in cannibalistic behavior than female larvae.
Young ants can even join in the fight to protect the nest, eating intruders of their own kind.
Many ants are "social parasites" who build new colonies by stealing the nests of other ants. A young queen will often enter an enemy's nest to lay eggs, tricking the workers into raising her offspring. Over time, her offspring can take over the colony. Young ants, on the other hand, protect their home through cannibalism.
Because the invading queen is usually not attacked and killed directly, the defending larvae can fight back by killing her eggs. Young ants react differently to different types of eggs, recognizing parasitic eggs and eating them.
To sum up, in many aspects, the existence and development of ant colonies depend on young ants, and young ants are crucial to the entire ant colony.
