Overview

• The iScience paper details how researchers revived a Turkish–Balkan recipe and verified ant‑seeded milk fermentation under controlled lab conditions.
• In field trials in southern Bulgaria, jars of warm raw cow’s milk with four live red wood ants were incubated overnight in ant mounds to start coagulation.
• Analyses found abundant formic acid and a community of lactic and acetic acid bacteria, with Fructilactobacillus sanfranciscensis emerging as the dominant strain.
• Only living ants reliably seeded the necessary microbes, whereas frozen or dehydrated ants produced weak or failed fermentations.
• Chefs at Copenhagen’s two‑Michelin‑star Alchemist created dishes to showcase the yogurt, as researchers warned against home attempts due to parasite risks and declining red wood ant populations and flagged ant‑derived microbes as a future fermentation toolkit.