5/5 After this, the invader assumes the role of queen: the workers care for her, cleaning and feeding her, while she begins to lay the eggs that will give rise to her new colony.

Furthermore, there appears to be a convergence between the two species.
(blog) phys.org/news/2025-11...

4/5 They then carefully approach the queen, spraying her several times with a secretion from their abdomen (believed to be formic acid) before immediately retreating. The workers, who live in a more chemical than visual world, then attack and kill their own queen.

3/5 The queens infiltrate the L. flavus or L. japonicus nest very calmly and slowly so as not to trigger any alarm. It is also believed that they camouflage themselves chemically through contact with the colony, although the exact mechanism is unclear.

2/5 The parasitic queens belong to the species L. orientalis and L. umbratus and parasitize species of the same genus: L. flavus and L. japonicus, respectively. These species are widely distributed throughout the northern hemisphere.

(paper) www.cell.com/current-biol...

Wow, thanks for the information, Alan!
This is very important, and I didn't realize it.

Yes, definitively. In fact the first response is social, even for those species (or individuals) that end up passing the test. But, after this stage, most end up ignoring the reflection.

In my opinion, they publish good papers and I like the journal. However, it's true that their practices are similar to those of MDPI, and this should be noted. My approach is to read with a skeptical eye, as we should always do with all journals : )

2/2 The advantage of those individuals who are calmer around humans would be selecting traits typical of domestication (behavioral and physical changes).
I think it makes sense, however, I wonder if there could be a bias in the photographs taken.

(blog) www.scientificamerican.com/article/racc...

Extra: Cleaner fish are wrasses, a group that has been called the "primates of the fish world" because of their tool use, social cognition, and mirror self-recognition.
Take a look at this amazing wrasse (Semicossyphus reticulatus).
Sometimes intelligence is visible at first glance.

6/6 They suggest that the shared ancestry hypothesis can explain its origin.
Brace yourselves: the mental representation of oneself must have originated before the divergence between actinopterygii and sarcopterygii, around 430 million years ago.

5/6 The authors reject the gradualist view of the evolution of self-awareness, as well as a possible origin by convergence, as there is no ecological explanation for why some species possess this ability.

4/6 The fact that they recognize themselves in photographs and try to remove the mark if they appear with it indicates that they have this mental representation of themselves, which, in this case, includes their own face.

It seems obvious that a large brain is not necessary for this.

3/6 The best evidence that motivation is essential to passing the famous mirror test can be found in cleaner fish. They pass the test with mirrors and photographs of themselves when the mark is relevant to them in terms of color and size (when it resembles a parasite).

2/6 If pigs, chickens, dogs, and other animals are capable of using mirrors in this way, why do they fail the famous mirror test?
Here, it is argued that it is due to a lack of motivation, the movements required, because they do not care about a stain, or because it focuses on vision.

It resonated with me in such a way that I found myself using it while considering borderline examples. For instance, I wondered if you would consider this very interaction through a cellphone/laptop a case of retention-informational tool use.

2/2 In more technical terms: epigenetically modifying the promoter of a single gene in the neurons of the dentate gyrus engram strengthens or weakens the expression of a specific memory, even when the memory is already consolidated. It is a mechanism that seems to regulate our memory.