To become queen, these ants fight — then shrink their brains - NBC News

But for Indian jumping ants, female workers can fight for the crown.

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, scientists discovered that Indian jumping ants can shrink and regrow their brains within a few weeks — a feat that has never been seen before in insects and is also incredibly rare in the animal kingdom.

"Indian jumping ants are particularly unique," said Clint Penick, assistant professor biology at Kennesaw State University and one of the study's authors.

Like many ant colonies, the nest of an Indian jumping ant contains a queen and thousands of workers that clean the royal's eggs, hunt for food and feed the larvae.

When an Indian jumping ant queen dies, more than half of the colony's female workers participate in a monthlong "tournament" to vie for a seat at the top, Penick said.

Penick said the Indian jumping ant colonies used in the study were the same ones that were collected in India almost 20 years ago and were the first epigenome for the species sequenced.

He said he expected them to die, but what they discovered was that the Indian jumping ants can regenerate the size of the brains and shrink their ovaries back to the size of workers