ants of Theseus

Kill 1 ant, 2 more shall rise to take its place

I guess the interesting thing is they built and maintained a nest which looked mostly like a colony. The colony's food source being the fresh falling ants you mentioned.

> "In total darkness, they have constructed an earthen mound, which they have maintained all-year-round by moulding it and keeping the nest entrances open," researchers wrote in a study in 2016, noting these ants are "a far cry from a fully functional colony".

The ants who fell in died after a while, but the story is really about how they survived to form a colony close to a million through survival by cannibalism.

Can you imagine if somebody 200 years ago gave Australians a path back to England.