Causing a 'civil war' to destroy ants

According to the Los Angeles Times , US researchers believe that they have found a way to create a real " civil war " to reduce the damage caused by a foreign antagonist group attacking California.

(Photo: HTV) These ants originating from Argentina arrived in North America in 1891 with a cargo ship to New Orleans. They were present in many places in the United States, including California state from San Diego (south) to Sonoma district 800 km to the north, causing heavy damage to crops.

These ant species identify each other by their smell. Therefore biologist Neil Tsutsui and chemist Kenneth Shea of ​​the University of California at Irvine (UCI) have taken the initiative to cleverly change this smell so that species mistakenly think they are facing the target enemy. kill.

'Preliminary results show that when we change chemical substances in ants, we can interrupt their cooperation and cause a civil war within these giant corporations', Shea chemist affirmed at the conference of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco.

According to UCI researchers, 1,200 ants that test animals treated by this method bitten each other, even destroying each other.