As we enjoy the return of Star Wars and its big-screen battles, is there also wee warfare going on under our feet?

"We were told they were going to war to eradicate a nearby ant [colony]. Would that have been true? Are there creatures out there that do go to war, other than humans?”

Actually, “termites do not raid ants. It is rather the reverse,” Abdullahi Ahmed Yusuf, an entomologist at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, says by email. (See "How Do Termites Build Their Huge Structures?")

For instance, matabele ants prey on termites, storming their colonies in huge numbers. But Yusuf says it’s a hunting strategy—not what we would call war.

“They put out a perfume that is a mimic” of the host ants’ alarm scent, making their victims panic and leave their nests. This