When pavement ants (the little reddish brown ants you see in sidewalk cracks) have intra-species war they use the concept of a one-to-one correspondence to determine who has a larger army.
Ants pair off locking jaws with another ant of similar size.
Any leftover ants from the larger colony will gang up two on one against the other colony.
Then based on things only ants know either they all go home OR one colony overwhelms the other.
But most of the time only a few ants die.
@futurebird What does “overwhelm” mean?
The notion of “counting” by pairing up is kinda amazing.
The purpose of these battles... what initiates and ends them, is unknown. There are some theories. The simple one is that the winners take over some of the foraging territory of the losers, but observations don't totally support this.
Another idea is that it's all about heated patches of sidewalk. The space under the warm rock is ideal for raising alates and the battles occur in the lead up to nuptial flights. The ants take over the heated nesting spot under the battlefield.
@futurebird So we don’t know what the consequences of winning/losing actually are?
I really find these ants astounding — they live in urban settings, in the hard-packed dirt under concrete slabs, and they seem to thrive.
myrmepropagandist
Michael Gemar