Strategists, suicide bombers or drug addicts! Welcome to the real life of ants

• Audrey Dussutour and Antoine Wystrach, two ant specialists, have just released a book on these small insects:

  The Odyssey of Ants

  .

• They come back to the capacities of some 75 species out of the 13,000 known and break down a certain number of prejudices.

• We discover strategist fodder, capable of sacrificing themselves for the colony, but also sometimes rebellious far from the image of the good little soldier.

Forget everything you've always believed about ants, or almost.

In a garden or a forest, when you observe a colony, you have the impression that the life of each of them is well regulated, that they do their job without ever flinching.

It almost looks like a hierarchical society with the very human idea that we find at its head the queen, warm in her CEO costume, ready to distribute the good points by naming her most deserving workers.

In reality, among these living beings who appeared more than 100 million years ago, there are also rebels, but also lazy people and even super-warriors.

“In short, an ant colony is organized chaos!

», decide Audrey Dussutour and Antoine Wystrach from the first pages of their book

.

These two myrmecologists from Toulouse take readers along the path of some of the 13,000 species identified today, handpicked.

An opus with scientific content that reads like an adventure and science fiction novel.

Capable of defeating prey that are up to 10,000 times their weight, we discover them in turn doctors, drug addicts or even suicide bombers.

This is the case with

which does not hesitate to explode its abdomen, releasing a poison that can knock out several opponents.

A sacrifice to protect the nest.

warrior grannies

In their book where they focused on 75 species, the two scientists chose to focus on fodder, these grannies who come out of the anthill to find food for the youngest busy taking care of the larvae and organizing the anthill.

In particular males, who contrary to the image of heroes presented in the cartoons

and

, are “housed, fed, bleached”.

These workers then take all the risks.

Far from being simple

, with their brains no bigger than a pinhead, they manage to do incredible things for the colony.

“These are creatures that are capable of solving incredible challenges and often of which we have no idea at all.

For example, they have mastered agriculture for millions of years, they use antibiotics, they know how to build traps.

The colonies are not societies but families since they are all genetically linked to each other and when the colony works, it works for a common goal”, insists Laure Dussutour.

But being also very different from each other, they use very different means to achieve this.

Some, equipped with almost 360 degree eyes, use them to map the terrain, in timelapse mode.

Others, blind, use their olfactory system and the collective to reach their prey.

Less known, the species

has managed to make friends with the caterpillar of a butterfly, the Anatole rossi.

It was the ecologist Gary Ross who made this discovery while closely following this butterfly in Veracruz (Mexico).

The caterpillar secretes a honeydew when the little shepherdesses make love to it and in exchange they take care of it by creating a kind of sheepfold where it shelters.

“He observed this cooperation between caterpillar and ants, an absolutely fascinating association.

He tells this story of a small sheepfold where the ants guard the caterpillar during the day, where it comes out at night.

Even during the metamorphosis, they protect her,” says Audrey Dussutour.

Sometimes psychopathic, often inspiring

If they highlight all the capabilities of these little beasts, the two authors of this fantastic odyssey have not overlooked the slightly less friendly sides of the ants.

We discover them as slavers.

With species whose queens have nothing to envy to the very bloody Marie Tudor.

Half psychopaths, these

do not hesitate to pretend to have died at the door of her cousins' nests.

The latter bring them back inside.

And this is where she reveals her true face, murdering the workers.

“She will then suffocate the queen of the nest for two or three months by strangling her and thus keep her alive.

Everyone has their own strategy, some throw stones in the face of others,” says the scientist, laughing.

A scenario worthy of

, in which their bodies can become a weapon.

As in the case of the bullet ant, whose bite can make even the strongest faint.

Or the fire ant that invaded the United States and struck down the electrical circuits of many buildings.

They attack en masse and their bites can cause allergies, even causing death by anaphylactic shock.

Nothing to do with the

, this little black ant that is having fun at the moment, encrusts it in the houses of Corsica or Brittany.

“It enters houses, it bothers people, but it does not cause damage.

Don't leave food lying around, that's what attracts them.

No matter how much you wash off the pheromone trails they leave behind with bleach, they will make new ones,” emphasizes the Toulouse myrmecologist.

Rather than getting rid of it, she advocates living with it.

And to be inspired by it.

As is already the case for some researchers who have used the algorithms provided for telecommunications or the architecture of nests.

Or even more recently, the ability of some of them to differentiate tumor cells through their olfactory system.

“They are above all useful to the ecosystem of which we are a part.

They are very responsible for soil aeration, seed dispersal, and often we don't think about it, pollination,” concludes Audrey Dussutour.

To meditate on when one is tempted to send a good kick into the anthill.

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