Male ants are born without mouths in some species because they don’t live long enough to need them.
Ants are as violent and nasty as people. Like us, they’re their own worst enemies. In addition to the constant fighting and raiding that goes on between colonies, some species have evolved to be particularly horrible to one another. Like the slavemaker ants who enslave members of other colonies. Or one species whose queen will sneak into a neighboring colony and start quietly cutting the head off the host queen. “When this is accomplished, sometimes only after many hours, [she] takes over as the sole reproductive, and the colony eventually comes to consist entirely of her offspring and herself.”
Self-sacrifice actually makes sense for an ant. This one is hard to wrap your head around. Most ants can’t reproduce (that’s the queen’s job). So whether or not an individual survives makes no difference to evolution, since that individual won’t be passing on their genes anyway. What’s important is that the COLONY survives. For us, personal survival is an overwhelming imperative. But for an ant, survival is just one of several options. Well, one of two, I guess...
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