The Myrmidons -- a whole citizenry raised up from ants to replenish a population laid low by plague -- may well have been the source at some DNA level of the suicide bomber impulse so popular in the Middle East:

"The ultimate sacrifice in public service is to destroy enemies by committing suicide in defense of the colony. Many kinds of ants are prepared to assume this kamikaze role in one way or another, but none more dramatically than workers of a species of Camponotus of the saundersi group living in the rains forests of Malaysia. Discovered in the 1970s by the German entomologists Eleanore and Ulrich Maschwitz, these ants are anatomically and behaviorally programmed to be walking bombs. Two huge glands, filled with toxic secretions, run from the bases of the mandibles all the way to the posterior tip of the body. When the ants are pressed hard during combat, either by enemy ants or by an attacking predator, they contract their abdominal muscles violently, bursting open the body wall and spraying the secretions into the foe. (Hölldobler and Wilson 67). "


From http://www.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/myrmidons.html

Regards,

A