Scientists Helped a Horde of Cannibal Ants Escape from a Soviet Nuclear Bunker
If you were trapped in a bunker with no food or sunlight, you’d probably eat your neighbors, too
By Jess Romeo
At first, it sounds like a ’50s horror flick: up to a million cannibalistic ants escaped from a Soviet nuclear bunker after years of isolation. But fear not — the story of these plucky insects is actually a tale of resourcefulness, persistence, and survival against all odds (which, yes, also happens to involve cannibalism).
In 2013, a team of Polish biologists, led by Wojciech Czechowski, stumbled across a huge population of wood ants trapped inside an abandoned munitions bunker in western Poland, originally built in the ’60s to store nuclear weapons. Hundreds of thousands of unlucky insects had apparently wandered too far from their nearby nest and managed to fall into an open ventilation pipe. This accidental trapdoor dropped the ants into a sealed chamber with no light, heat, or food sources.
Intrigued, the scientists kept watch over the secluded swarm. They realized that since the pipe opened up in the middle of the ceiling, the ants were unable to crawl back to the surface (unless they spontaneously gained spider powers). But did the ants give up hope? No…
