6,000-km-long ant super colony stretching from Portugal to Italy

Ant Supercolony. Image Credit: Anagoria/Wikipedia The Argentine ant (Linepithema humile) has created one of the most remarkable biological phenomena ever recorded: a super-colony stretching around 6,000 kilometres along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of Portugal, Spain, France and Italy. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), these ants, which originated in South America, have formed the largest known cooperative unit in the animal kingdom.Unlike most ant species, which aggressively defend their territory against neighbouring colonies, Argentine ants in Europe display a rare social behaviour called unicoloniality. This allows billions of ants living in millions of nests to recognise one another as allies instead of rivals. The result is an enormous interconnected network that functions like a single underground city spanning thousands of kilometres, according to BBC Wildlife.What makes the Argentine ant super-colony so largeMost people are familiar with the small mounds built by native ants, but the Argentine ant's underground network is on an entirely different scale. Even the impressive nests of Central America's leafc...