🚨 ARTHROPOD OF THE DAY 🚨

There is only one C. obscurior male per colony. He’s the ergatoid, the dominant male ant, and he must defend his territory. If a new male wonders in for some mating, the reigning ergatoid will dab chemicals from his anus onto the intruder. This butt secretion will cause all of the workers to band together and kill the newcomer. C. obscurior males have a “kill” scent.

That’s not all that they’ll do. In an effort to further reduce any possible rivalry, the ergatoid combs the nurseries looking for newborn males to slaughter. The soft one-day-olds are easy pickings. However, if they find a two-day-old male whose armor has hardened, it becomes a pitched battle with a 14 percent chance that the young ant wins and a 43 percent chance that they will both die. This is mostly because they’re both rubbing their kill scents on each other, encouraging the workers to kill, kill, kill. Many times, the workers end up slaying them both, but it’s okay if they both die. New male are always being born, and the dead ones are fed to the larvae.