Hello and WELCOME to today’s Daily Fun Fact From Flora.

Hope you’re in for a ride — this one is a good"un.

I imagine you don’t need me to tell you that — all over the animal kingdom — parenting is difficult. So much time, so much energy, so many resources I mean DEAR GOD WILL THEY EVER STOP EATING?!

It is something of a struggle.

So, what if I told you that there was a solution? A solution figured out by a rather fantastic species of ant known as Protomognathus americanus (also known as Temnothorax americanus ). It turns out that these bad boys are a species of slave-maker ant and actually have no idea how to rear their own young. They are totally clueless.

They have no idea how to raise offspring and so instead just USE OTHER ANTS as SLAVE LABOUR!!

A small P. americanus colony might feature a queen, between 2-5 workers and 30-60 slaves.

To kick off one of these colonies a young P. americanus queen will usurp the nest of another ant species by driving away or killing the resident queen and sometimes killing all of the adult workers as well.

I know what you’re thinking — why would the queen do that? Why would she kill all the workers? She will just be hella lonely.

BUT THIS IS WHERE THE GENIUS LIES.

She sits and waits for all the carefully cared-for pupae to hatch and when they do these freshly hatched ants have no idea that the queen isn’t of their own species. So they just work for her instead. They become imprinted on her chemical odour and so will think that that nest is their own and that that species is their own. GENIUS.

But now you must be thinking — Ah Flora but then all of those little workers will die and then the Queen will once more be lonely af.

This is where it gets even juicier.

These ants will nick more slaves from other (closely related) ant species in the Temnothorax genus in a process known as " slave raiding" (I promise I"m not making this up). The raids take place in two steps. Firstly a scout will go and find a potential host nest and when it does it returns to its nest to recruit its nest-mates and they will go and seize a brood to bring back. This is actually done by a whole bunch of ant species and some will capture up to 14,000 pupae in a single season!

As far as I can tell — the slave-making ants are able to reproduce and then just rely on these other ant species to do all the parenting. And thus the cycle continues.

Maybe rethink your parenting strategies?

Love you loads, F xxx