Sylvia Kramer

It's called destructive disinfection.

When a young ant or pupa is terminally sick, it sends out a kill-me signal in the form of a smell.

Worker ants who smell it unpack the young ant's cocoon and apply a deadly disinfectant.

That's Sylvia Kramer, the study's senior author and a professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria.

She says that the self-sacrifice is a solid evolutionary strategy because protecting the colony is the best way for these young ants to pass on their genes.

Arundhati Nair, NPR News.