FORGET Spartacus – you need look no further than an ant colony for a slave mutiny.

Some ant species raid colonies of smaller species, killing the queen, scaring away worker ants and stealing larvae. Kidnapped larvae grow up as slaves.

Susanne Foitzik of the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, has evidence the slaves have evolved an unusual weapon in the fight for survival: mutiny.

When her team monitored 473 pupae in 88 slave-making colonies, they saw enslaved worker ants destroy two-thirds of newly hatched queens and female workers of their captors. Male pupae, which do not conduct raids, were left alone ( …