Q.1863

In November 2015, a new species of the _____ ant, was discovered by a group of citizen scientists in the Western Ghats region of Kerala. The ants’ first photographic record was obtained by Manoj Vembayam, Kalesh Sadasivan and Vinay Krishnan, members of the TNHS Ant Research Group. The species are known as ______ ants because they feed on their own larvae. At times of scarcity, the species punctures the body of their larvae to drink the hemolymph.

Name the species; something you can also connect with a Bram Stoker novel or a Sir Christopher Lee character.

[+ Show Answer]

Dracula Ant

Earlier, three Dracula ant species had been discovered in Kolkata, Himachal Pradesh, and Karnataka. Also, ‘Count Dracula’ is the title character of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel ‘Dracula’ and was famously portrayed on screen by Sir Christopher Lee.