"Civil Unrest" Among the Ants

OK: Who here has ever pitted insects against each other in a jar? Even once? Or fed an ant lion? Surely... No show of hands, please; you know who you are.

Offering some proof to the suspicion that biologists are just highly-educated versions of the same people they were in grade school, here's a story about what some of them have been up to lately: Vicious Ants Made to Attack Their Own.

And a snippet:

"Getting the chemical treatment was dizzying. First, Tsutsui and his team coated the inside of a vial with the chemical. They plopped an ant into the tube and spun it in a machine for 90 seconds to make the chemical stick.

"'After all that shaking it's a little bit wobbly but usually it's still alive,' Sulc said. 'Then, we put it back into the Petri dish with ten of its friends from the same colony and then we observe how aggressive they are toward him.'

"The other ants immediately attacked, using their large mandibles, or jaws, to bite and tear off its legs, Sulc said."