http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cannibal-ants-soviet-nuclear-bunker
On top of a ventilation pipe that juts out from the mostly underground facility, there is big, mound-like nest of wood ants. It is a perfectly normal place for wood ants to live. They feast on the sweet honeydew secreted by aphids dwelling in nearby pine trees, and soak up the rays of post-Soviet sun.
But within the bunker, in a small room at the bottom of that shaft, there was a second colony of ants. These ants had no sun, no warmth, no light, and no honeydew. So they survived on the flesh of their fellow ants. Their colony was the wretched result of individuals falling from the healthier colony above, and with no way to climb out of the bunker, they could never return. It feels like a mirror-horror that could have come straight out of the mind of Jordan Peele, except that instead of a commentary on race and class in America, it’s a testament to one population’s sheer will to survive. “It is a peculiar colony” says István Maák, a zoologist at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. “They are doing the best they can, surrounded by dying.”
This is actually not an uncommon behavior for wood ants. The species is known to engage in battles among colonies, particularly in spring, when they extend their ranges in search of food. Maák calls this time of year the “wood ant wars.” After a battle, the victors feast on the bodies of the defeated. Down in the bunker there were no alternative sources of food—not enough bat guano or passing mites, for example—so instinct kicked in.
Ant Colony Two’s drive to survive resulted in an extraordinarily meticulous ant necropolis that lined the walls of the small room and spilled through the doorway. “They were organizing their corpses in waste piles, putting neatly in the corners, and transporting it away,” Maák says. There were approximately two million corpses, many of which displayed bores from bites and fret holes—signs that their contents had been consumed, he says.
