Here’s an interesting fact about ants: if you bring ants from different colonies together, they will fight. That was taken for granted until science discovered that some related colonies would be friendly to their cousins from other colonies — making what they called super-colonies.

Now, according to a piece on the BBC, scientists have discovered that super-colonies from different continents are, apparently, at perfect peace with each other.

Argentine ants in Europe, the US and Japan will not fight each other, and in fact treat each other as members of the same colony, according to the story:

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.

In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the ‘Californian large’, extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan.

…

Whenever ants from the main European and Californian super-colonies and those from the largest colony in Japan came into contact, they acted as if they were old friends.

These ants rubbed antennae with one another and never became aggressive or tried to avoid one another.

In short, they acted as if they all belonged to the same colony, despite living on different continents separated by vast oceans.

Freaky! And you know what? Even human colonies (we call them countries) separated by oceans sometimes fight and disagree. So I think the ants have one up on us there.

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.