European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - August 10, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse                                16 the stars and stripes August 1985 kidnapping an in the world of the byjoe Waschenbach National geographic slavery May have been abolished in most but not in the ant cer Tain species of ants live solely on slave enslaving other ants for a typical Colony of Western slave making ants May have More than slaves working for slave ants forage for regurgitate food to their Groom and feed the larvae and Queen and defend the nest against attack from other if the Colony moves to a different the slaves carry their one by to their new the slaves do All the they run the it literally belongs to explains psychologist How Ard who has spent several Summers in an Ari Zona Mountain desert watching the Western Slavenak ing poly Ergus Force ants of a related Formica into a life of the slave makers put the ants in bondage by raiding Formica nests and stealing their the slavery among the one of the most unusual forms of social behaviour to have is carried on in fewer than 100 of the to species of ants on slave making ants Are found primarily in Europe and North including nearly every Region of the United slave raids May be happening in your own Back first the scouts go in the slave states of the High feet up in the Chiricahua mountains of Southeastern scout ants look for target nests under rocks and Leaf litter near cats prickly ear and other the scouts Are always after the same Formica the successful scout Heads straight Back to its own Colony to recruit it arouses the ants through both tactile and chemical thousands of excited red ants Start All of a very there on the the advancing army May number to a moving column about 3 feet wide and up to 16 feet it looks like the approach to the George washing ton Bridge in new York in Rush hour everyone trying to get into a different says a professor at Hunter College in new York typically the ants Are on the March for about a the raid itself is generally theres very Little poly Ergus ants use chemical warfare in its very topoff the raiding party sprays the target nest with a chem known As a propaganda that agitates slave making red ants carry off pupa during raid on nest of related ant National geographic and confuses the Formica adult workers and Queen and forces them to Bolt out of their nest and scatter in every the fleeing ants try to escape with their but most of the Young get left the raiders pile in and within seconds snatch the if its a Good they come away with about they May even go Back for a second and get As Many As topoff the Fate of the captured ants is either to be eaten More than half Are used for food or to be raised As in a Good a poly Ergus Colony May steal to slave raids Are conducted throughout the Spring and usually during the cooler part of the Day in the High the raids take place Between mid afternoon and top offs research proved that the scout uses the Sun to navigate Back to the target nest with the invading when topoff placed a Wax paper canopy Over a raiding party to diffuse the the scout the worker ants and the raid was when he used a Large Mirror under a Tarpaulin to make the Sun appear to set in the Eastern the raiding party suddenly turned around and changed raiders use both the Sun and the chemical Trail made by the scout to find their overfeeding a poly Ergus Colony by artificially provid ing an abundance of pupae significantly reduces the frequency of topoff the need for food As Well As slave labor is apparently the stimulus for staging kidnapped pupae Are not enslaved in the human once the Hatch in the poly Ergus they Are imprinted with the doors of the Host ants and do not regard their masters As a foreign its like adopting a baby at As far As it this is its Home and these Are its topoff a form of social May have evolved from the More common predation or from territorial fighting among poly Ergus ants predators such As the army which topoff has studied for 20 raid solely for food and eat All the Brood they in the evolution of there is a stage in which slaves Are not absolutely essential slave makers have others doing work for them that they Are still capable of doing in the which is True of the four poly Ergus the slave making ants have so heavily relied on others for so Long that they have lost the ability to care for themselves and Are dependent on the slave ants for its almost As if the slave maker has become the topoff