The Buggers
The ant-like hive species that humans called buggers.
The Buggers, formally known as the Formics, are an ant-like alien species and humanity's adversaries in the Ender's Game series. The species consists of hive-minded colonies directed by queens.
Quick Facts
- Species name
- Formics (Buggers)
- Affiliation
- The Hive Mind
Lore & Background
"Bugger" is a pejorative used by humans, while "Formic" comes from formica, the Latin word for ant; the term "Formic" was first used in Ender's Shadow (1999), and the film adaptation uses it exclusively. Though often described as insectoid, the Formics are warm-blooded, have an internal skeleton and have shed most of their exoskeleton. They live in vast underground colonies, usually without light. Their first attack on humans was an accident, made without realizing that humans were intelligent.
Reader's Guide
Queens communicate instantaneously, and can do so even with other species; drones are capable of individual thought and of a more limited mind-to-mind communication. Mazer Rackham stopped the Second Invasion by realizing that the buggers are a hive mind. In Ender's Game the war ends when Ender's fleet destroys the bugger homeworld, and a single dormant queen egg survives in Ender's keeping.
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Elsewhere in Ender's Game
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