I’ll be damned if I’ll link directly to Newsweek, so here. The short version is that these ants kept falling down a ventilation pipe and survived by… eating the other ants that fell down a ventilation pipe. Scientists studying the nightmarish hell-colony of cannibal worker ants that resulted decided that it would be interesting to find out what would happen if the ants were given a chance to escape back to the original colony. It turned out that…
…the ants went back to the original colony, and stopped being cannibal ants. I’m sorry, that’s all that happened. No spreading of the madness to the original colonies, no rampaging bands of demon-ants with a taste for ant-flesh, not even any morbid aphid-blood tattoos. That’s how things go in the real world.
Which is good, right? Dull, but good. Obviously, the ants would have a different opinion, except that they’re, well, ants and can’t conceive of opinions at all.
Moe Lane
PS: Kudos on the scientists for getting some of that Neutral Good deity action going, though. No, really. You guys had gotten all of the science out of there that you were going to get, anyway; no reason not to save the ants, honestly.
They haven’t ‘ceased’. They’re merely biding their time till the hunger rises again.