The ants had fallen down a ventilation pipe and survived for years by feasting on their nestmates corpses.
The team, led by Wojciech Czechowski, from the Museum and Institute of Zoology and the Polish Academy of Sciences, were carrying out a survey of bats living in an abandoned Soviet nuclear bunker when they came across the wood ants living in an ammunition bunker where nuclear weapons were once kept. The ants had no access to the outside world and appeared to have come from a nest above that was positioned over a ventilation pipe. When the ants fell down the pipe, they were entombed in the bunker.
Ants are known to set up colonies in unusual places. Nests have previously been found in the chassis of a car and inside a wooden box in complete darkness that could only be accessed by a tiny skip at the base. However, in all other cases, the ants were able to come and go."The masses of Formica polyctena workers trapped in the bunker had no choice," the team wrote."They were merely surviving and continuing their social tasks on the conditions set by the extreme environment.
After being provided an escape route, the ants appear to have made their way back to the original nest. On falling down the original ventilation pipe, they were able to make their way back, so the bunker was"deserted."
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