Sabotage among slave-ants

[Blake's Baby]

Just seen this posted over on LibCom - thought it might make interesting reading for folks here too. It discusses the use of sabotage as a tactic that ants enslaved by other species engage in.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120926092910.htm

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Holy shit this is neat, thanks for posting comrade!

[doesn't even make sense]

Cool as shit. Given that I'm pretty sure most of us don't consider ants conscious actors it shows at least one example of a revolution of sorts being a logical consequence of given conditions.

Now I'm just thinking of that aristocratic fucker E.O. Wilson snickering about ants being the ideal Marxists so I'm gonna close this thread and pour myself another drink.

[cynicles]

These ants are crazy, halfway through reading that article I felt more like it was describing the slave trade.

[Drosophila]

Solidarity with our ant comrades!

[citizen of industry]

I don't get it. If less than 50% of the slave-holding ants offspring survive, most of them being killed by the slaves, then why do they do it? It's not efficient. Wouldn't the species have died out?

[Blake's Baby]

Perhaps the alternative is they do it themselves and 90% die out.

Before the invention of modern medicine, approaching 50% of humans died before the age of five. We didn't die out.