While we enjoy the return of Star Wars and their battles on the big screen, is there also a weekly war taking place beneath our feet?
The question of the strange week of the animal on Saturday asks this question after Eli Coates wrote after seeing what she believed to be termites in African jungles.
"We were told that they were going to war to eliminate the ants [colony] nearby. Is this true? Are there creatures involved in the war, regardless of humans?"
Small horror
Indeed, “termites do not attack ants.
For example, matabele ants feed on termites, breaking into their colonies in large numbers. But Youssef says it is a hunting strategy, not what we might call war.
HORNETS from hell
They can kill forty bees in an instant. A young gang can put waste in an entire bee colony, leaving thousands of severed heads and wings in its wake.
Sometimes University of Florida adds that the perceived enemies coexist. For example, "it is common for termites and termites to coexist in their nests," he says by email.
Chimpanzee guerrilla war
Are other animals attending war? Since our close relative of chimpanzees is usually seen as warlike, we took the question to Nicholas E. Newton Fisher, the principal behavioral ecologist at the University of Kent.
"It may depend on the definition" of war, "There is good evidence that chimpanzee monkeys launch deliberate raids on neighboring communities, which will lead to the annexation of lands."
For example, during a ten-year study of a family of chimpanzees in Kibali Park in Uganda, primates were killed or 18 chimps were injured from other groups and seized their lands. (Related: "Chimpanzee gangs killed to expand territory")
Chimpanzee
Some chimpanzees were seen in Uganda (pictured, animals in the Gombe Stream Tanzania National Park) gather and kill chimpanzees in neighboring groups.
"The behavior of the chimpanzee is very similar to the guerrilla group" - and it is eroding the enemy - more than we expect as a normal battle.
Unlike humans, chimpanzees are not formed in opposing armies, fighting them biased to see who wins, and "two allied societies to defeat a third" do not.
Groups of animals compete for resources, sometimes in an organized manner, but "war" means something more formal.
minimum? says the term "war" is "inappropriate for explaining the conflict within the non-human Animalia".
We are comfortable with it - as long as they do not fight for the dark side.
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