Scientists have found a colony of cannibal wood arts in an old nuclear bunker.
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The unique group of insects appears to have solely survived on the corpses of its fallen members while housed in a main nest build in a vertical ventilation pipe in the bunker in Poland.
Every year, a large number of ants fell down the pipe, but the offshoot colony thrived despite the difficult conditions.
According to a team led by Professor Wojciech Czechowski at the Polish Academy of Science, the ants had to survive on their own nestmates.
The paper's authors added: ''The present case adds a dimension to the great adaptive ability of ants to marginal habitats and suboptimal conditions, as the key to understanding their unquestionable eco-evolutionary success.''