Ants summon their fellow humans to survive in the bunker

The ability of the ants to survive for many years in a closed bunker surprised researchers.

The team, led by Wojciech Czechowski at the Museum and Zoological Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, discovered that wood ants (Formica polyctena) lived in an abandoned bunker in 2013 while surveying bats. . The ants have no exit to the outside world and seem to come from a nest located above the ventilation duct. When ants fall down the pipe, they are surrounded in bunkers.

Ant colonies isolated in abandoned bunkers.(Photo: Newsweek).

However, when they returned to the area after two years, the team found that the ant colonies were not only still there, but larger, even without food, heat and light. They estimated the number of ants living in the bunker to one million.

Ants often build nests in unusual places. Previously, researchers once found ant nests in a car chassis and inside a wooden box in a dark niche. But in every other case, the ants can go in and out, and the ants stuck in the bunker have no choice. They survive and continue to perform social tasks under conditions set by extreme environmental conditions.

In 2016, Czechowski and his colleagues began analyzing the behavior of wooden ants . They installed a boardwalk that led to another ventilation duct so ants could escape the bunker. A year later, they returned to the area and found that the ant colony was almost completely gone. Examining the remaining ants, the team found many bites mainly in the abdomen. This is evidence that wood ants eat human remains to survive. After being provided with an escape, the ants find their way back to the original nest and the bunker is abandoned.

"The survival and development of ant colonies in bunkers over the years without spawning, may result from the constant supply of new worker ants from the nest above and the accumulation of corpses. The ants act as a food source, allowing the trapped ants to survive in extremely adverse conditions , "the team concluded in a report published in the journal Hymenoptera Research.

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