SCIENCE LAB SCREAM : REVOLUTION IN MINIATURE [ 2 ]

Usurper in the ant colony : A fake queen seizes the throne : The discovery was made by a Taku Shimada, an ant enthusiast in Japan, and described in the journal Current Biology.

One day a few years ago, he found an ant queen of a parasitic species, Lasius orientalis, in a mountainous region in Japan.

The species are known to take over colonies of other ant species, but scientists weren't sure how. So he brought the queen to his home, set up a camera and introduced the queen to other species.

The parasitic queen soon approached the colony's true queen, sprayed her with a substance - most likely defensive formic acid-  and quickly retreated.

That prompted the worker ants to begin biting her antennae, legs and abdomen. Eventually, they killed the queen. The throne was empty.

In the wild, the parasitic queen would then return and lay her own egg.

A horde of worker ants would already be in place, ready to care for her young.

The World Students Society thanks Rebecca Dzombak.