But new research suggests that this unsettling behavior might not even be the most disturbing thing that parasitic ants are capable of doing. In a paper published today in Current Biology, researchers captured how a parasitic ant queen essentially tricks worker ants into killing their own queen—their mother. Shimada had filmed the parasitic ant species Lasius orientalis inducing matricide in host colonies, Takasuka explained to Gizmodo. This pattern deviated from previously known forms of parasitism in ant colonies, which typically had the invading queen throttling or beheading the host queen. “The workers’ attacks grew more violent the more fluid was sprayed on their real queen,” Shimada wrote.