'Cannibal' ants discovered in nuclear bunker
It sounds like a horror movie premise: Polish scientists have discovered a colony of ants that fell into a nuclear bunker and survived through cannibalism.
A paper published by the scientists in the Journal of Hymenoptera Research said the wood ant colony had been trapped in the Soviet-era bunker in Poland since 2013, and had been estimated at close to a million insects.
Although the scientists' purpose was to help the colony escape the bunker, they investigated how the insects could have survived without access to ready forage.
A colony of ants discovered in Poland survived in a bunker by cannibalism, scientists suggest. A Current Affair
The paper concluded that "one evident means" could be cannibalism.
"It is known that wood ants consume dead bodies of their conspecifics left in masses on the ground during spectacular 'ant wars' early in the season," the paper read.
"The function of such wars is to settle the borders of neighbouring conspecific colonies, but the corpses also add substantially to the scarce food resources available when the colony lives commence after winter."
The scientists were able to rescue the colony and relocate it to the surface world.
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