Long before humans walked the Earth, while dinosaurs were still roaming the land, a parasitic fungus hijacked the mind of a ...

"Milk" for ant larvae. Ants operate within the bustle of a busy colony, posing difficulties for researchers trying to observe the various interactions among ants that keep the colony running smoothly.

When Entomophaga grylli infects locusts or grasshoppers, they climb to the tops of plants before their death. The zombie-ant ...

Chinese Academy of Sciences researchers report that fossilized entomopathogenic fungi from mid-Cretaceous amber reveal some ...

Decapitator flies lay their larvae inside the ant's thorax. The ant then has just a few weeks to live before its eaten from the inside out. . | Credit: armi fauzi / 500px via Getty Images.

Worker ants tend to pupae and small larvae in a colony of clonal raider ants, Ooceraea biroi. Photograph by Daniel Kronauer. ANIMALS; Ants make ‘milk’? This new discovery took scientists by ...

In the traditional view, ant pupae are passive, trapped in a dull, transitional phase of life. The insect starts as a wriggling, wormlike larva, then seals itself into an inert pupa that looks ...

Ant pupae—which are equivalent to the chrysalis stage of the butterfly—produce a milklike substance derived from molting fluid that is eaten by both adult ants and larvae. Typically, when insects molt ...

The life cycle of a flying ant has four stages: egg, larvae, pupae, and adult. Ant eggs will either continue to grow and mature into their next stage of life or be eaten by fellow nestmates as a ...

Within 24 hours, the larvae and adult ants in the colony had taken up the dye into their digestive tracts. Read more: Ants appear to feel more optimistic after a sugary treat.

The ants defend the plant against fungi and herbivorous caterpillars but are apparently subject to a specialized beetle that also lives in those hollow stems and feeds on the ants and their larvae.

OK, fine, fire ant queens are probably way too small to see when they’re 400 feet above the ground, but flying is a vital part of their life cycle.