OutsiderClub February 25 2014
While we’ve gone about our daily lives, billions of hidden agents have established an empire across Europe.
Over the last 80 years, they have set up millions of outposts from northern Italy through southern France and all the way to the Atlantic coast of Spain.
They have brutally usurped and butchered their native European rivals in a zero-sum game for territory and resources.
The expertise and authority required to carve out, coordinate, and control an empire that could cover the distance from San Diego beyond the northeast tip of Maine makes this exploit seem impossible.
It should take a legendary figure like Alexander the Great or a conspiracy of powerful people to accomplish such a feat.
But there is no such emperor or conspiracy. In fact, no one is in charge at all.
Deceptively Simple Rules
The empire that has come to dominate such a wide swath of land is a supercolony of Argentine ants.
It is made up of millions of independent colonies that have brutally destroyed their rivals. Yet you can take Argentine ants from Portugal and drop them in an Italian colony, and they all get along just fine.
These ants will not hesitate to slaughter their kin in South America, so what changed when they crossed the Atlantic?