text: Newfound wasp literally has skeletons in its closet | Fox News
  Nests of the bone-house wasp D. ossarium are closed by an outermost vestibular cell filled with dead ants. (Merten Ehmig.)
  Cavity-nesting wasps may live in self-made holes or pre-existing tunnels in plants or pieces of wood. These cavities typically contain several brood cells the wasp equivalent of a single hexagon in a beeswax comb which are separated by thin walls made of bits of plant, resin or soil. Scientists have even found bits of insects in the mix.
  Wasp architects may favor dead ants as a building material because of the way their carcasses smell, Staab and his team suspect. Scents on the ants' bodies, even in death, might offer camouflage or protection from predators a red flag to stay away as many ants are fierce defenders of their nests, the researchers wrote. The ant most commonly found in walls of wasp homes was Pachycondyla astuta, an aggressive ant species with a mean sting that's abundant in the region.
  Other wasps especially parasitic ones resort to similarly grisly measures to protect their offspring. The parasitic wasp Dinocampus coccinellae, for example, hijacks ladybug bodies, turning its victims into zombie slaves that keep predators away from its larvae. And elsewhere in the animal world, other creatures even snakes have taken advantage of the bad reputation of ants to survive. A 2009 study in the journal Insectes Sociaux described how banded cat-eyed snakes lay their eggs in the fungus-filled chambers of aggressive leaf-cutter ants to keep their reptilian babies safe before they hatch.