In an "Alien Vs. Predator" type relationship, fire ants and crazy ants are fated together in battle. Lately, the fight has swung the way of crazy ants by a recently discovered adaptation through which they're able to neutralize their enemy's usually deadly poison and continue their attack, Popular Mechanics reported.
"Other ant species typically avoid fire ants," said Edward LeBrun, who contributed to the study published recently in the journal Science Express. "Fire ant venom is so toxic that it's not something other ants will confront. But these crazy ants will just charge on into the fray with what seems like wild, willful abandon."
At first it is "wild, willful abandon." Once they connect on their first strike -- and are subsequently sprayed by fire ants' poison (three times as strong as the insecticide, DDT) -- they retreat and cover themselves in their own poison, which, by mechanisms still poorly understood by scientists, acts as a neutralizer. As if in a video game, the fully healed ant can then re-launch its attack.
"And when they're done, they'll run right back in to fight and take on another fire ant," LeBrun said. Though they're significantly smaller, the tactic has been the overwhelming difference in battle. "The tawny crazy ants are just steamrolling the fire ant populations," he said.
Warfare takes place in northern Argentina and Brazil. It wasn't always this way, the beleaguered fire ant would tell you if he or she could.
"One of the really fascinating things is that these two species share a long, common evolutionary history," David Holway, an entomologist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the study, told Popular Mechanics. "They're both from some of the same parts of South America. So this detoxification ability in the crazy ants is something that might have emerged from interactions with the fire ants over many millennia."
Crazy ants winning could have large agricultural impacts and thus affect the region's food chain, for ants infuse the soil more than any other insect by turning it over constantly and spreading its nutrients.
"Each ant species we have plays a valuable role in the environment. Some turn the soil, others plant seeds or regulate the pest population in trees. So when a new species of ant takes over an area, it can completely change the way that habitat works," Eleanor Spicer Rice, an entomologist who was not involved in the study, told Popular Mechanics.
The rise of the crazy ant is also a new pest to consider for humans.
"Their venom stings so much that people think that fire ants are jerks," said Spicer Rice. "But somebody living in a house in these areas, you have to wonder which [ant] you're going to hate more. Fire ants sting, but will stay in your back yard. These crazy ants will move into your house and into your electrical equipment. People normally only notice ants when they start to bother them, but this is a great reason to start paying attention now."
