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crown - dwelling ants from Southeast Asia have an volatile defensive move : The insects take down their enemy by blowing themselves up . If that sounds intestine - wrenching to you , just imagine what it feel like to the ant .
Commonly known as " exploding ants , " workers in this radical respond to threats by intentionally ( and fatally ) rupturing their torso walls , spattering rivals with toxic fluid .
Two ants met a sticky end when one of them ruptured her body to spew a sticky yellow goo.
explode ants are typically lumped together into a coinage group calledColobopsis cylindrical , but investigator recently determined that there are at least 15 metal money of these ego - sacrifice insects — including one antecedently unknown metal money in Borneo , which they name in a new study . [ ant Scurry on ' Treadmills ' for skill ]
Many beast plight in chemic warfare , stewing toxic brews in their own body to subdue prey or scare off foeman . poisonous beast — which includesnakes , spiders , insects , fish , cephalopod mollusk , amphibian , reptilesand even some types ofmammals — save their toxins with stings , stabs or morsel .
But others , such asskunks , venom - squirt scorpions and bombardier beetles , choose to spray their chemicals . In fact , bombardier beetles can emit their heated , poisonous blasts evenafter they ’ve been swallowed , with inauspicious result for their predator ’s digestion ( and a awkward escape for the beetle ) .
A minor worker ofColobopsis explodensraises its posterior in a defensive pose.
However , defensively rupturing one ’s own trunk — a unconscious process shout out autothysis , from the Grecian news for " ego " and " sacrifice " — is slightly more unusual , and is known only in ants andtermites , the scientists reported .
Tick, tick, boom!
The novel ant coinage — Colobopsis explodens — was formerly call " yellow muck , " after the brilliantly color ooze make by its burst worker ant . Their colonies can hold thousands of someone , inhabiting the leafy canopy of trees that stomach as tall as 197 feet ( 60 metre ) , and covering an area of at least 26,900 substantial feet ( 2,500 square metre ) , the study generator report .
The research worker settle to makeC. explodensa modeling mintage — one that scientists seem at to attract conclusions about a larger radical ; in this case , explode emmet . They noted thatC. explodensants were " especially prostrate to self - sacrifice " in the presence of threats — which included intruding researchers .
To blow themselves up , the reddish - brown venial prole — all uninspired female — contracted a part of their abdomens called the gaster . They clenched it so tightly that it rupture , spewing a chicken secernment that was manufactured in the emmet ' jaw glands and had " a distinctive spice - like odor , " according to the bailiwick .
Major workers ofC. explodensemploy a different defensive strategy than their exploding colony mates — they use their unusually enlarged heads.
And self-destructive plosion are n’t the only uncanny adaptation inC. explodens . Major workers — the bigger " soldier " ants that are also sterile females — have exposit heads with raised buckler - alike section that are circular and flatten out at the top . The strangely shaped heads create a perfect hoopla that the ants use to temporarily block openings into their nests , the scientist wrote .
The findings were published online today ( April 19 ) in the journalZooKeys .
Original article onLive Science .
