Some ants turn their own nestmates into living jars of honey for the whole colony

In honeypot ant colonies, certain workers called 'repletes' are deliberately overfed sugary liquid by their nestmates until their abdomens swell to the size of grapes, after which they stop moving entirely and hang from the nest ceiling as living storage vessels. During droughts or food shortages, other ants stroke a replete's antennae to signal it to regurgitate its stored food, keeping the whole colony fed through lean periods that would otherwise starve it.

— Bert Hölldobler, Edward O. Wilson, The Ants — Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1990
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