An Ant’s Acid Antidote

It’s pretty clear why the tawny crazy ant gets the “crazy” label. The golden-colored ant tends to run around erratically, stopping abruptly and turning before darting off in a seemingly haphazard direction. But when the tawny crazy ant encounters the venom of enemy fire ants, its behavior is purely rational. Doused with the fire ant’s deadly poison, tawny crazy ants scuttle off to a quiet spot and begin grooming themselves with self-made formic acid. The formic acid turns out to be an “ant-idote” to the fire ant’s venom. It’s the first example of any insect producing and applying its own chemical antidote to a competitor’s poison, explains Edward G. LeBrun, an entomologist at Brackenridge Field Laboratory in Austin, Texas, whose team made this discovery (Science 2014, DOI: 10.1126/science.1245833). Although using formic acid as an antidote hadn’t been observed before, ants and formic acid have a long history together. For example, ...