Professor Discovers Fire Ants Play Dead to Survive

Fire ants create territories, care for their young and even fight to the death to defend their homes. But University of South Florida Professor Deby Cassill and her Experimental Design in Biology class at the St. Petersburg campus have discovered another interesting quality: Fire ants can also play dead.

Cassill and her class of undergraduate students were studying the aggressive behavior of ants. While videotaping them, they noticed one ant attack and seem to kill another. However, after the attacking ant left, the other got up and walked away.

"I have never seen this behavior before and I don't think anybody else has ever witnessed this behavior in any ant species," Cassill said.

Cassill and the class discovered that younger fire ant workers fake death as a defense strategy against attacking colonies. Ants that pretend to be dead are four times more likely to survive an attack than older workers who choose to fight back.

The discovery was so stunning that two students in the class decided to conduct a directed study on the fighting behavior of ants, and some of the students have co-authored peer reviewed articles with Cassill on the subject for the scientific journal Die Naturwissenschaften.

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