Animal Civil Wars

Short history lesson into animal civil wars Kofi link: https://ko-fi.com/stoicstick Animal Civil Wars Transcript: Everyone loves a good civil war, but you don’t really get many of them anymore, well in third world countries they happen all the time but id argue that’s just the CIA vs whichever third world hellhole they decide to democratise. Real civil wars are kind of a thing of the past, most nations have already had their fill of brother wars but animals haven’t and quite regularly you will see wars between sub-species or races that can last years and span across whole countries. And that is what we will be talking about today, my definition for an animal civil war includes animals that look very similar and are not natural predators of each other. Okay intro out of the way let’s talk about the first animal civil war and that is the Argentine ant vs every other ant species. To start with im going to need to give you a little backstory on ant war and the specific ant Linepithema humile or the Argentine ant. Now in Argentina where they originate this ant species as well as any other ant species will form nests and go to war with all other ant nests, regardless of if they are of the same species or not. If the Argentine ant nest crossed a different ant species they would tear eachother to pieces, and if they found another Argentine ant from another colony they would rub eachother with their antennas realise they aren’t from the same nest and then begin to kill eachother. Its all a bit hostile and is basically the equivalent of you getting stopped on the street and getting killed because you threw up the wrong gang sign. Now this obviously wasn’t that great for the species for 2 reasons, 1 you are killing members of your own species needlessly and 2 the Argentine ant when it would fight other ant species would often lose because its pretty small and weak comparative to many other species. Anyway, this continues until the 1800s when some Argentine ants sneak aboard a ship that sailed for New Orleans and they then start a new colony in North America. This time however, when the ant colony grew and formed new nests they no longer fought each other but instead welcomed each other and started forming a super colony that spanned many nests. How did they do this, well some people speculate it was due to allopatric speciation and the inbreeding that it causes removing the ability of the ants to differentiate between nests, but I have a sperate theory. I believe that amongst the Argentine ants a leader arose, a Lisan antghaib if you will. This ant united the colonies and began his holy war in which they collectively out competed and forced their will upon every other ant species in the united states. These ants spread throughout all of north America before eventually spreading to Europe and now L Humile is present in the trillions in every continent except ironically antarctica. All this done by an ant which has a latin name that means humble. This global hegemony may not last forever though as recently breakaway colonies have formed, such as in San Diego where a separate hostile L Humile colony has formed and both the San Diego and supercolony regularly have battles that result in about 30 million ant deaths every year and a war front that extends multiple miles. Even with this recent mutiny, Overall I have to say that the winner of the this ant civil war will have to be L humile with a decisive victory, they are actually so potent of a species that they are considered a super invasive species because they thrive in almost every environment and outcompete most other species due to their sheer numbers. The next animal civil war we are going to be looking at is the Red squirrel vs the grey squirrel war. To understand this civil war we have to go back to 1875 1 year prior to the first batch of grey squirrels being released in the UK. Sciurus Vulgaris or the UK Red squirrel were the dominant squirrel species and were found all across the UK. They have a body length of around 18-24cms, weigh around 300 grams and have a lifespan of around 6 years. Their diet consists mostly of seeds fruits and flowers and they often store their foods in caches so that they have backup food sources if they become scarce. The red squirrel was the only squirrel species in the UK at the time and this was the status quo until some idiots decided to bring some grey squirrels from north America over, and establish a population on their grounds for ornamental reasons. What they probably didn’t foresee was the fact that added squirrel competition would be bad for the native population. Sciurus Carolinensis or the grey squirrel is much larger than the red squirrel weighing on average 50% more, being around 30% larger size wise and having lifespans that are generally longer living for about 9 years.