This is the kind of story older ants tell young ones about what happens when you stray into dark and forbidden tunnels.

No, they didn't survive for years. They died after a short time, but their ranks were continually replenished by fresh ants falling from a colony above.

The ants who fell in died after a while, but the story is really about how they survived to form a colony close to a million through survival by cannibalism.

I guess the interesting thing is they built and maintained a nest which looked mostly like a colony. The colony's food source being the fresh falling ants you mentioned.

> "In total darkness, they have constructed an earthen mound, which they have maintained all-year-round by moulding it and keeping the nest entrances open," researchers wrote in a study in 2016, noting these ants are "a far cry from a fully functional colony".

With no queen how could they reproduce down there after the originals died of old age though?

From the article:

> They were not reproducing, though. Instead, the population was being replenished through sheer accident.

Thank you. I was trying to figure out how entropy was maintained after food was metabolized.

Kill 1 ant, 2 more shall rise to take its place

Or fall.

ants of Theseus

So very happy that the story ended with them giving the trapped ants a path back to their colony

No, they gave the cannibal ants a link to a new food source. Imagine you're living in your house, your neighborhood, and there's this large pit in the center, where the cannibals live. They're 30ft down so they can't get out, so you don't have to worry. Then someone puts a ladder down to them. Start of a horror movie if you ask me.

"Difficult to tell from this vantage point if they will consume the captive Earth-men or merely enslave them...one thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here! And I for one welcome our new insect overlords. Like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar-caves."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4jWAwUb63c

Why didn't they just climb out the ventilation shaft they fell in? Can’t they walk on the ceiling?

(2019) with ants

Vyell, fak.

Imagine visiting the basement at Omelas and this happens.

Poor ants.

Literal hell for ants, until they were saved by a supreme being.

"Boy am I glad not have consciousness right now" the ant said, as the nearby ants start tearing at him, in the cold pitch black of a nuclear bunker.