Vampire ant: They feed exclusively on the blood of their own offspring, but the children are alive and well. A masterpiece of evolutionary madness (8 photos)

If someone is responsible for the formation of new species on Earth, then he is a brilliant madman. I take my hat off to this gloomy genius and really want to become his student. After all, creating a whole family of vampire ants that feed exclusively on their own children is a masterpiece of nonsense.





And these ants are damn stylish.

Baby killer ants are sometimes found in Old World rainforests, but 8 of the 9 genera of this fine family recommend you live in Australia. And you can even listen to them, these particular animals will not harm you.



It’s not that they don’t want to, it’s just that the ants don’t have the opportunity. Even the largest vampire ants are no more than 0.5 centimeters long, and they see frankly poorly. Some species do not come out into sunlight at all. From sitting in the dark for a long time, their eyes completely atrophied, and their chitinous armor was repainted in brown and yellow tones.





But this does not bother the insects themselves. In eternal darkness, eyes are not needed; there you can only trust smells, touch and vibrations. And our heroes have these feelings at their best. Thanks to them, vampire ants hunt other inhabitants of the underground world: worms, mites and centipedes.



Usually the victim is too small and unable to fight back. But some invertebrates categorically refuse to die! To calm them down, the ant tightly wraps its mandibles around the victim, pumps the muscles with energy, after which its jaws collapse at a speed of 320 kilometers per hour!

The mechanism of operation of this technique is very complex, but vaguely resembles a human snap of the fingers. It even sounds similar! But the consequences are noticeably different: the ant’s bite works no worse than a guillotine, the enemy is cut down in a few microseconds.



The image is slowed down 16,000 times!

The remains of the unlucky animal are transferred to the anthill and go to feed the larvae. Minor citizens of the insect city pounce on offerings with great pleasure; they will not leave even a crumb for their older sisters. But they are not offended; adult ants will take their share in another way.



When an insect feels hungry, it approaches the nearest larva, bites into it with its mandibles and greedily drinks the child’s hemolymph. Surprisingly, young people not only do not suffer from domestic violence, they completely ignore the fact of the attack! However, an adult is not violent, she will never drink more than necessary, and will never kill a future member of the colony.



For vampire ants, maintaining the population is especially important, because their reproduction is accompanied by certain difficulties. For other ants, everything is simple - a winged female finds a winged male, they make love, after which the female takes care of the first generation of ants.

But the blood-sucking brethren are almost devoid of normal females. Their place was taken by gamergates - worker ants capable of reproducing. These females constantly fight with each other for the right to give life to the next generation of residents of the ant city. Such infighting does not lead to anything good; even the most successful anthills number only 10,000 individuals.



But male vampire ants are still winged. Out of habit, you can even confuse them with wasps.

Exotic? Yes! Effective? It seems not, but this family has existed for at least 60 million years, which means the scheme works!