Ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithms [1], inspired by the cooperative foraging behavior of ants, are praised for their distributed intelligence, parallelism, positive feedback, and robustness.

An ant that can turn carbon dioxide in the air into dolomite stone in its exoskeleton may hold clues to how humans can sequester greenhouse gases to avert climate disaster. Fungus-farming ants forage ...

Life may look like a paradise for beetles living in ant colonies. Plump, wriggling ant larvae and helpless eggs sit waiting to be devoured, while hundreds of thousands of ants stand at the ready to ...

Some baby ants don’t ask for help when they contract deadly infections — they ask to be killed. Terminally ill worker ant pupae actively emit a “find me and destroy me” chemical signal, prompting ...

A new study reveals astonishing behavior within ant colonies: certain worker ants willingly sacrifice themselves to protect the colony’s survival. Researchers found that these ants take on high-risk ...

Sick young ants release a smell to tell worker ants to destroy them to protect the colony from infection, scientists said Tuesday, adding that queens do not seem to commit this act of self-sacrifice.

For some would-be ant queens, the easiest way to take over a colony is to dupe its worker ants into committing regicide. The scientist E.O. Wilson once wrote that ants are the most warlike of all ...

The black parasitic ant tricks the workers into attacking their amber queen. Current Biology / Takasuka et al. Ants are no strangers to violence. Sometimes, an outsider queen will attack a colony’s ...

Scientists say they have for the first time unlocked how a parasitic ant uses chemical warfare to take over the nest of a different species, by tricking workers into an unlikely assassination. The ...

Experts discovered an unusual form of regicide in which a parasitic ant queen tricks workers in a colony into turning on their own mother. By Rebecca Dzombak Rebecca Dzombak previously reported on ...