Ant Babies Ooze a Weird Kind of 'Milk', And The Whole Colony Slurps It Down

While originally researching how social isolation affected ants, Rockefeller University ethologist Orli Snir and colleagues noticed this drinking ritual. After isolating the pupae from the colony, the researchers manually removed the fluid for some of the baby ants but left the others alone.

"This shows that, in the colony context, pupae depend on adults to remove the secretion, and would otherwise die," Snir and teamWorker clonal raider ants place young larvae on the pupae, where they feed on pupal secretions. The baby ants produce their 'milk' during their most seemingly dormant phase of development – while they metamorphose from larvae to adults, right after they gain their pigment. This phase just so happens to coincide with the hatching of the next cohort of larvae.Their adult caretakers carefully pick them up and place them on their older pupae siblings for a drink. If newborn larvae did not receive the fluid in the first few days of life, they were more likely to die.

The team also identified hormones and neuroactive substances in the pupa milk, along with amino acids, sugars, and

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