Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, chuck here real quick with some bad news
Speaker 1: and sad news. Uh. Sketch Fest this year in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: which is where we were gonna have our first live
Speaker 1: show in two years here in a couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: has been postponed. I believe they're looking to postponed it
Speaker 1: by a whole year and kind of rebooked the whole
Speaker 1: festival ideally, but you know, with what's going on around
Speaker 1: the country with Omicron, they didn't feel like they could
Speaker 1: press forward, and UH, as bummed as we are, we
Speaker 1: think it's the right move as well. So, uh, if
Speaker 1: you have tickets, just stay tuned for an announcement. I
Speaker 1: think you will either probably be able to well I'm
Speaker 1: not exactly sure what's gonna happen with them, maybe a
Speaker 1: refund maybe if you hold onto them, they're good for
Speaker 1: next year because we're probably gonna look in the same theater.
Speaker 1: But listen up for announcement soon. And again, all apologies,
Speaker 1: we're super sad about it. We're really looking forward to
Speaker 1: getting back out there again. But until further notice, live
Speaker 1: shows are still on hold. All right, now here we
Speaker 1: go with the show. Welcome to stuff you should know
Speaker 1: A production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and this is
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Part two about ants, which is
Speaker 1: just knocking our socks off, and we we we released
Speaker 1: this one on the first one on Tuesday. Chuck, my
Speaker 1: socks are still off in its Thursday, that's right. And
Speaker 1: you know, if you listen to part one, we tried
Speaker 1: to throw in some amazing ant facts and I think
Speaker 1: we I think we came through there, but most of
Speaker 1: that was a little bit of the nuts and bolts.
Speaker 1: I think Part two has got a little bit more
Speaker 1: wow factor because we talk a lot about a lot
Speaker 1: more even about the social structure of these amazing insects. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So ants are great, great example of social speed, social
Speaker 1: insect like bees, um, some wasps, but I think there's
Speaker 1: plenty of solitary wasps too. But let's say, like bees,
Speaker 1: they really kind of resemble bees in that sense. Um.
Speaker 1: And despite you know how many ants there are and
Speaker 1: how many bees there are, um, apparently social insects um
Speaker 1: only make up something like two percent of all insects species.
Speaker 1: The rest are um solitary or anti social or drifters,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. So um, at the heart of
Speaker 1: any uh social insect society is the queen and usually
Speaker 1: chuck the who the whole thing is so hierarchical. There's
Speaker 1: just like one queen. Yeah, this is this is the
Speaker 1: one part that tripped me up a little bit as
Speaker 1: far as they're as as far as that being a
Speaker 1: benefit for their survival, I would think, like, hey, more queens,
Speaker 1: more eggs, like there should be you know, not all queens,
Speaker 1: because obviously I get that queens need a lot of
Speaker 1: special care. Um, I mean, I guess let's talk about it.
Speaker 1: Because queens get get fed. One reason that makes them
Speaker 1: the queen is that they're the only sexually reproductive female
Speaker 1: and that's the only thing she does is mate and
Speaker 1: lay tons and tons of eggs. Uh. An army aunt
Speaker 1: queen can lay up to three hundred thousand eggs in
Speaker 1: a in a few days. Uh. And they're they're bigger,
Speaker 1: like they're just they basically sit around, they mate, they
Speaker 1: lay eggs, and they get fed a really protein rich diet,
Speaker 1: so they grow up to like, you know, three or
Speaker 1: four times the size of all the other ants. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so with the queen, um, they're they're like you
Speaker 1: said that One of the big differences are The difference
Speaker 1: UM is that they're they're bigger than other um female ants,
Speaker 1: which are worker ants. Genetically, they're basically the same, it's
Speaker 1: just that they're much much bigger, which means UM somehow,
Speaker 1: I think also from that protein rich diet. They're also
Speaker 1: um they have ovaries that function as well, so they're
Speaker 1: able to reproduce. But that's basically the only two differences.
Speaker 1: And that just goes to show you that any um
Speaker 1: worker egg can be raised into a queen, right and
Speaker 1: we'll see, you know, cases where that might happen. Another
Speaker 1: difference is they live a lot longer. The queen ants
Speaker 1: of the Black Garden aunt can live up to thirty
Speaker 1: years apparently, Uh, female workers live about a year. And
Speaker 1: I guess we can talk a little bit about the males.
Speaker 1: The poor male aunt, uh, they only live a week.
Speaker 1: They are hatched from unfer They don't even bother to
Speaker 1: fertilized eggs. For the males, they had from unfertilized eggs,
Speaker 1: whereas all females had from fertilized eggs. And the males,
Speaker 1: you know, they did their thing. They're there too to
Speaker 1: impregnate the queen and then they die. There's sex. Sex
Speaker 1: slaves is what they are. Yeah, and and David points out,
Speaker 1: you know, Dave Russ helped us with this. He said, basically,
Speaker 1: almost any ant that you see is probably a female ant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not just because, um, the workers are responsible for doing everything.
Speaker 1: But like you said, the lifespan of male land is
Speaker 1: so short, the chances of you seeing one are pretty slim,
Speaker 1: although as we'll see, there are some some times where
Speaker 1: they're on such full spectacular display that you actually may
Speaker 1: have seen male lands before. Sure. Yeah, we'll get to
Speaker 1: that weirdness in a minute. But the females are the
Speaker 1: workers that you know. It's like, uh, where was wonder
Speaker 1: woman from? Uh? Amazonia? Amazonia. It's kind of like the
Speaker 1: society there. It's just it's all these ladies making things
Speaker 1: happen as a big group, all in service to this queen.
Speaker 1: And the workers do everything. They've feed and care for
Speaker 1: the young, they feed and care for the queen. They
Speaker 1: go out and get the food, they maintain that nest
Speaker 1: in the colony, which we'll talk about. It's just remarkable
Speaker 1: what they do. Uh. They're the police force, they're the army,
Speaker 1: they're the custodians. They do everything. Yeah, so like everything
Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with um eating and laying eggs.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's the workers doing all that stuff. It's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. And depending on the species, sometimes the workers
Speaker 1: are um more specialized than another species. Sometimes they'll be
Speaker 1: like major workers who are much larger UM than the
Speaker 1: minor workers, so they'll be the ones that go out
Speaker 1: and like forage and maybe defend the nest while the
Speaker 1: minor workers, the smaller ones, are left behind to tend
Speaker 1: to the the larva and the pup a and um
Speaker 1: and basically raise the next generation. So there's there can
Speaker 1: be like specialization of what you do as an ant
Speaker 1: depending on your size or how you were raised. That's right,
Speaker 1: and so uh, it's a very strict castiste and basically
Speaker 1: um there's no like working your way up the ladder.
Speaker 1: It seems like you kind of have your job. You're
Speaker 1: happy to do it. Um Ants are very happy, emotional
Speaker 1: little insects, right, Yeah, they really wear their hearts on
Speaker 1: their sleeves. You can tell if an ant is having
Speaker 1: a bad day. But the good thing about it is
Speaker 1: you can cheer them up pretty pretty easily. To just
Speaker 1: hold your finger out lit him climb up on your finger.
Speaker 1: They find it so delightful and if you have a
Speaker 1: little honeydew in your pocket, you can really turn their
Speaker 1: day around. Uh. Now, you know we said we mentioned
Speaker 1: the males just basically impregnate the queen then die, but
Speaker 1: I didn't really quite get this part about the genetics
Speaker 1: of the chromosomeal genetics. So basically, a male is just
Speaker 1: an egg that has a genome from it his mother
Speaker 1: from the queen. Usually the queen um a female is created,
Speaker 1: so like that would mean that all unfertilized eggs are males,
Speaker 1: and then the queen comes along and fertilizes some select ones.
Speaker 1: And I think it's actually dependent on what the workers
Speaker 1: point out. I think the workers actually decide how many
Speaker 1: new female workers are needed compared to how many males
Speaker 1: are are needed. And then the queen comes along and
Speaker 1: fertilizes some proportion of those unfertilized male eggs, and then
Speaker 1: those become workers female workers. And then in some cases
Speaker 1: when there's not a queen, say a queen died or
Speaker 1: something like that, a colony would find itself up the creek.
Speaker 1: But apparently there's plenty of ants species where the workers
Speaker 1: can actually lay unfertilized male eggs to raise a generation
Speaker 1: of males that can mate with a queen that the
Speaker 1: um that the workers produce as well, so the workers
Speaker 1: can keep a colony from dying off if the queen dies. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: After I saw that some of these queens can live
Speaker 1: thirty years, I just became paranoid about like accidentally killing
Speaker 1: a queen. But I think that probably doesn't happen because
Speaker 1: they're never out there to be stepped on, right, No,
Speaker 1: it's it's you pretty much won't have to invade a
Speaker 1: nest like you're an exterminator if you're killing the queen.
Speaker 1: Oh man, But that's what they do. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: what they're trying to go after the queen. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we're we have um a mole problem in my yard.
Speaker 1: And I'm just like, I guess we have a mole
Speaker 1: problem because I'm certainly not gonna let somebody come along
Speaker 1: and drop m eight s into these mole holes and
Speaker 1: blow them up. But luckily I found a service that
Speaker 1: uses something called mole scram and it's just kind of
Speaker 1: like an irritant, but it doesn't actually hurt them in
Speaker 1: any way. They just don't want to be around it.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna give that one a try, because they
Speaker 1: will mess up your lawn really quickly. I thought you're
Speaker 1: gonna say, a guy comes by with a flute, I
Speaker 1: wish leads them down to your neighbor's out. I just
Speaker 1: did our pipe Piper episode as a select so I
Speaker 1: heard it recently and it's really good. But the first
Speaker 1: twenty minutes is really odd. It's like oddly like we're
Speaker 1: like challenging one another and it's just really weird. And
Speaker 1: then I don't know, we're just like showing off to
Speaker 1: another You'll just have to listen to It's it's pretty interesting,
Speaker 1: but it really it really um comes out on top.
Speaker 1: It's a good episode. Interesting, that's not the stuff you
Speaker 1: should know way, I know, That's what I'm saying. It's
Speaker 1: it's weird. It's a weird start join episode, but usually
Speaker 1: shrink in the face of competition. That's all right. We
Speaker 1: don't challenge each other. You get very strange, all right.
Speaker 1: I guess we need to get to the nests here. Um,
Speaker 1: this is kind of some of the most remarkable stuff
Speaker 1: that you're ever gonna see. I saw this one. Do
Speaker 1: yourself a favor go to YouTube and I can't remember
Speaker 1: what the search term was, but like amazing, uh aunt
Speaker 1: colony or something like that, and it's like a three
Speaker 1: minute video where they found uh They wanted to research
Speaker 1: what these things look like below ground, and so they
Speaker 1: pumped um concrete into the hole. I don't know where
Speaker 1: this was. It took ten tons of concrete to fill
Speaker 1: this thing, and then they let it sit for a
Speaker 1: month and then they you know, excavated or whatever like
Speaker 1: you would a fossil and dig around it and they
Speaker 1: dug out what ended up being. It looked like about
Speaker 1: the size of a Little League baseball in field, twenties
Speaker 1: six ft deep, a hundred and seventy ft across, and
Speaker 1: it was one of the most unbelievable things I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: It looked like, literally like an architect had designed it.
Speaker 1: Um they were talking about the efficiencies of you know,
Speaker 1: every tube was like it was the shortest route to
Speaker 1: get to the next thing. It was like it looked
Speaker 1: like it had been purposefully designed that way. And it's
Speaker 1: just the the DNA of these ants that know how
Speaker 1: to do this stuff. So, yeah, you you mentioned something
Speaker 1: important that the tunnels and the connections they make between
Speaker 1: all these chambers, they do tend to be like the
Speaker 1: shortest route between them, and ants also apparently will will
Speaker 1: um burrow on these really kind of steep angles, but
Speaker 1: they're at the angle of repose, which is the steepest
Speaker 1: angle that's something like pile of dirt or a pile
Speaker 1: of sand can maintain without collapsing. And somehow ants just no, like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the angle I need to be to be
Speaker 1: um digging at. Yeah, I saw that one thing you sent, uh,
Speaker 1: and I guess we can talk about the force chains here.
Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting. But um, when they were studying these ants,
Speaker 1: they thought maybe like maybe they're doing like a game
Speaker 1: of Jinga when they're making these tunnels where they they
Speaker 1: feel a little bit and kind of touch the block
Speaker 1: which in this case or little individual grains of sand
Speaker 1: or dirt or whatever, to see if it would weaken
Speaker 1: the structure. And I think after the end of this
Speaker 1: experiment they were like, no, they're not they're not doing that.
Speaker 1: They are just coded to do this. Yeah, And they
Speaker 1: were like, we have no idea how ants know what
Speaker 1: little grains of sand or dirt to pull out and
Speaker 1: what ones they shouldn't because their load bearing grains. But
Speaker 1: they just do and they're really successful at it. And
Speaker 1: what they what they somehow are aware of, is that
Speaker 1: there are things called what you said, force chains, where
Speaker 1: if you follow like a force chain of soil or
Speaker 1: dirt underground, like in a cross section of ground, um,
Speaker 1: those are the things that are holding the soil in place.
Speaker 1: And not all of the pieces or grains of dirt
Speaker 1: or sand are responsible for holding the soil in place.
Speaker 1: So you could conceivably move one and leave another in place,
Speaker 1: and that that column of sand or dirt above is
Speaker 1: going to stay. In tech somehow ants know what grains
Speaker 1: are load bearing and what grains aren't. And so when
Speaker 1: they're doing this, they're actually removing, um the sands that
Speaker 1: that aren't part of the force chain. And when they
Speaker 1: do chuck, it actually reinforces the structure of the force
Speaker 1: chain that it diverts it to the outside of the
Speaker 1: tunnel they're digging, which just makes it that much stronger.
Speaker 1: And there and again they're not just kind of testing
Speaker 1: it like a game of jinga like that would make sense,
Speaker 1: and I see why they thought that might be. What's
Speaker 1: happening is like they push a little bit to see
Speaker 1: if anything starts to give, it's again, it's just like
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty million years of practice. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: because they're so good at at creating these burrows and
Speaker 1: tunnels and chambers that that not only UM maintained, but
Speaker 1: also actually reinforced the force chains underground. UM like an
Speaker 1: ant colony, a subtraining and colony might hold up for
Speaker 1: decades once they dig it out. I felt terrible when
Speaker 1: I saw this thing being pumped full of concrete. I
Speaker 1: didn't know if it was vacant or you know, there
Speaker 1: was some pretty decent pile of dirt on top. But um,
Speaker 1: I know you made the point with that stuff he
Speaker 1: sent over that it's sort of like the tip of
Speaker 1: the iceberg. If you see a little ant hill in
Speaker 1: your neighborhood here in the United States, it's you know,
Speaker 1: twelve inches across and like sixtright inches. I there's a
Speaker 1: lot more going on under the surface. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: tens of feet underground. Like you said, the size of
Speaker 1: a little league field laid out on its side, tipped
Speaker 1: up on its end, and buried underground. That's enormous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this thing was huge. It was really really
Speaker 1: something Okay, chuck. So we're starting to get a little
Speaker 1: worked up. I think we need to melow out again.
Speaker 1: Do you want to take a break, Yeah, let's do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back everybody, all right, So we would
Speaker 1: you with a little bit on these ant colonies in
Speaker 1: the nest and what's going on underground. I mentioned at
Speaker 1: the beginning of episode one, these army ants who don't
Speaker 1: root down in a specific place. They're one of the
Speaker 1: only nomadic species, and they go miles and miles, which
Speaker 1: is a long long way for a little tiny ant,
Speaker 1: up to a million at a time, and to go
Speaker 1: to these places, they need to eat a lot of food,
Speaker 1: and they basically make what are temporary encampments out of themselves,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like fire ants make a raft
Speaker 1: out of themselves. These guys make a bivouac out of themselves. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They make a big I mean, look this up again
Speaker 1: with these pictures. It's a it looks like a big
Speaker 1: ant ball, but I guess it's hollow on the inside, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then underneath you've got a bunch of different kinds
Speaker 1: of worker ants um raising and directing where to where
Speaker 1: to fertilize, and feeding and creating a new generation of
Speaker 1: worker ants, and then after that generation is raised to adults,
Speaker 1: they break down their bivouac and DeCamp and just keep moving. Unbelievable,
Speaker 1: truly remarkable. They also can form super colonies. I know
Speaker 1: that there's a um one kind of ant. It's an
Speaker 1: Argentinian ant that they don't do this in Argentina, but
Speaker 1: in Europe they there is one super colony that goes
Speaker 1: up the coast from Italy to Spain for thirty seven
Speaker 1: hundred miles. That is all technically one, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like one big. It's like the Pando of ants. They
Speaker 1: just get together with their friends and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: I know these people are like behind me by ten ft.
Speaker 1: You want to meet them? And then that linked up
Speaker 1: for thirty seven miles. Yes, all from Italy to Spain
Speaker 1: to northwest Spain. It's just astounding. And you said something
Speaker 1: really important. You said that they don't this Argentinian aunt
Speaker 1: doesn't do that back in Argentina, and um they looked
Speaker 1: into why, and apparently the reason why is because back
Speaker 1: in Argentina they're very genetically diverse, so that that neighbor
Speaker 1: ten feet away is basically an enemy because all of
Speaker 1: these ants are trying to preserve their queen's line as
Speaker 1: as best they can, So another nest is just a
Speaker 1: totally different genetic line, so it's a it's an enemy.
Speaker 1: But when they find land somewhere new, like say Italy
Speaker 1: or Spain or whatever, that's a much less genetically diverse group.
Speaker 1: So as it reproduces, they form nearby colonies that are
Speaker 1: pretty similar to the original colony or the last colony.
Speaker 1: And so you have these massive super colonies that are
Speaker 1: super cooperative because there are basically just extensions of the
Speaker 1: queen's genetic line. Wow. Yeah yeah. And apparently ants also
Speaker 1: get from places like Argentina to Italy and have spread
Speaker 1: throughout the world largely thanks to humans who use like
Speaker 1: soil and sand as ship's ballast. And then when you
Speaker 1: get to the next place, you unload the ballast and
Speaker 1: there's all those ants you dug up from the last
Speaker 1: place you just set sail from. Wow, I don't know
Speaker 1: that that's how they gotten around. That's how they think
Speaker 1: that the uh, the red imported fire ant came here.
Speaker 1: All right, So that's pretty good. Here's another remarkable thing
Speaker 1: about ants. Uh Ants don't fly. Generally, everyone knows that
Speaker 1: ants don't have wings. But if a colony is super
Speaker 1: successful and there are too many ants and they're out
Speaker 1: growing their own living conditions, they will just grow wings
Speaker 1: and fly up in the air males and females and
Speaker 1: have a big mid air right, That's that's what it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. They grow wings and they say, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have wings now everyone. I know we don't normally,
Speaker 1: but we're getting too big, so we're all gonna grow wings.
Speaker 1: Then let's go up and fly in the air and
Speaker 1: have sex. So so um, when the when the colony
Speaker 1: gets too big, there's some sort of signal that the
Speaker 1: workers pick up on. They're like, oh, things are getting
Speaker 1: a little crowded here. I'm not sure what it is.
Speaker 1: Nobody is sure what it is at the moment, but
Speaker 1: there's some signal they pick up on, and so they
Speaker 1: start raising a generation of queens, of virgin queens called princesses,
Speaker 1: and those princesses um fly off on this Usually it's
Speaker 1: not really actually a day, but in some places like
Speaker 1: the UK, they celebrated as flying aunt d a kind
Speaker 1: of like how you know when um uh cicadas come
Speaker 1: up after like seventeen years here in the States. I
Speaker 1: get the impression it's kind of like that, although it
Speaker 1: happens every year. Um. And if it's hu it out,
Speaker 1: if it's hot out and it rained the night before,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance you're gonna see swarms of flying
Speaker 1: ants having air sex. Like you were saying, um, but
Speaker 1: what those are different virgin queens and they're going as
Speaker 1: far away from their their nest as possible because that
Speaker 1: increases the likelihood that they're going to find, um, some
Speaker 1: of the generations of winged male drones that were raised
Speaker 1: in other nests, and they're going to have sex, and
Speaker 1: then they're going to go off and found their own
Speaker 1: nests after that. Now that they've been now that they've
Speaker 1: gotten some sperm, that's right, And they can store the
Speaker 1: sperm for quite a long time. In some cases, the
Speaker 1: queen leafcutter ant can store viable sperm for up to
Speaker 1: twenty years and just eat it out a little one
Speaker 1: little bit at a time. And these were dave used
Speaker 1: and just keep fertilized in generation after generation of eggs. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I don't think we said the name of this
Speaker 1: air sex there. Actually it's called nuptial flights. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: remember in the Firefly episode they had like nuptial gifts. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was like, we've talked about that somewhere. I looked
Speaker 1: it up. It was definitely fireflies. It's pretty amazing. And
Speaker 1: then after that, you know, the males, as always, they
Speaker 1: die off, and then hopefully you got a bunch of
Speaker 1: new colonies. Yeah. If so, this is like the one
Speaker 1: time the queen is off on her own for about
Speaker 1: two or three weeks. She's like busy founding an entirely
Speaker 1: new colony. Um. There's nobody there to feed her. Um.
Speaker 1: She's just laying a bunch of eggs and she's choosing
Speaker 1: which or fertile, which to fertilize, which not. She's probably
Speaker 1: fertilizing most of them because she needs a lot of
Speaker 1: workers right then, and not very many male drones to
Speaker 1: have sex with, so she's basically just laying in fertilizing
Speaker 1: worker eggs, hatches them herself, and then once she successfully
Speaker 1: has a generation or two of workers under her belt,
Speaker 1: now her colonies got a pretty good chance of becoming
Speaker 1: stable because the workers can start to take over. She
Speaker 1: can do what she does, which is lay hundreds to
Speaker 1: thousands or hundreds of thousands of lay eggs every day,
Speaker 1: that's right. So if you ever see ants flying around,
Speaker 1: you know what's going on. Yeah, and they're they're they're not.
Speaker 1: Don't confuse them with termites. Apparently they do bear some similarities,
Speaker 1: but if you look closely, you can you can tell
Speaker 1: the difference. Like just the color alone is a dead giveaway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think termites are usually kind of white. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: the infestation in your house, it's it's probably termites, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the ants are flying around outside. They don't want
Speaker 1: to be inside right now, not for their nuptial flight,
Speaker 1: that's right. So that must be like a pretty lonely
Speaker 1: and scary two or three weeks for that that new queen,
Speaker 1: you know, I would say, So, I didn't get a
Speaker 1: good sense of what the sort of survival rate for
Speaker 1: that was. I didn't either. I'll bet it's all over
Speaker 1: the place, because again, there's like ten thousand to fourteen
Speaker 1: thousand species of ant, you know. Yeah, but it seems
Speaker 1: like a big deal when it happens, when they finally
Speaker 1: reached that they're carrying capacity or whatever, and they're like,
Speaker 1: all right, we gotta do this thing. It seems like
Speaker 1: it's a. It's a big deal to kind of split
Speaker 1: up that colony. One thing I didn't see is if
Speaker 1: you could make a bard of um winged ants like
Speaker 1: you could a swarm of bees, because they have, would
Speaker 1: be really impressive. Oh that just makes me itchy just
Speaker 1: thinking about it. So maybe we should talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the leaf cutter ant. Uh. If you see
Speaker 1: videos of the leaf cutter, you've if you've seen any
Speaker 1: documentary on ants, they probably talked a lot about the
Speaker 1: leaf cutter because those are the ones that you know,
Speaker 1: literally cut the leaf with those mandibles and you see them,
Speaker 1: you know, it looks like they gotta looks like they
Speaker 1: got a carpet knife. And how cleanly they cut through
Speaker 1: that Christmas paper. It's really neat, uh leaf and then
Speaker 1: one bit of leaf at a time, they're marching that
Speaker 1: stuff out of there. Yeah, and I mean they these
Speaker 1: leaves are enormous compared to the bodyway. But again, remember
Speaker 1: ants are super strong, and leaf cutter ants in particular
Speaker 1: can be very strong. They we talked about how um
Speaker 1: sometimes workers are divided up into different specialties. Leaf cutters
Speaker 1: are one of those where they have majors. They're the
Speaker 1: biggest and the strongest of all of them, so they
Speaker 1: carry enormous leaves compared to their body um. And they
Speaker 1: actually are basically like cutting down paths like machetes um
Speaker 1: to to clear a path for the smaller ones. The
Speaker 1: media and then the miniums that try the media do
Speaker 1: carry a lot of the leaves. But the little miniums,
Speaker 1: those little guys are just the farmers, uh, and they
Speaker 1: tend to this fungus. And this is you know, it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool enough that they take these leaves, they cut
Speaker 1: them up, and they transport them over these distances, uh,
Speaker 1: considering how heavy they are. But the really remarkable thing
Speaker 1: about the leaf cutter is that they are just as
Speaker 1: the other ants um kind of raise the cattle of
Speaker 1: these little apods. These are actual farmers of a fungus
Speaker 1: and they have the symbiotic relationship with this fungus that
Speaker 1: they farm underground. Yeah, so when they cut these leaves,
Speaker 1: they're they're fertilizing the fungus with these leaves to to
Speaker 1: let them decompose and let the fungus basically eat the leaves.
Speaker 1: The adults act really um drink the sap from the
Speaker 1: leaves because it's it's sweet. But they don't actually leave
Speaker 1: the leaves. They leave the leaves for the fungus. And
Speaker 1: the reason that they grow fungus and like, there's really
Speaker 1: no better word to describe what they do than farm.
Speaker 1: They farm this fungus. They tend to it, they heal
Speaker 1: it when it's sick, they know how to harvest it,
Speaker 1: they know how to get it to grow just right. Um,
Speaker 1: the reason that they farm this fungus is because it
Speaker 1: produces a food that the ants harvest to feed their young,
Speaker 1: to raise their young on. So symbiotic is right because
Speaker 1: they definitely want this fungus to be as healthy as possible.
Speaker 1: So the fungus really thrives in the presence of these ants,
Speaker 1: and the fungus in turn provides the ants with food
Speaker 1: for their young, but also in some cases chuck um
Speaker 1: antibiotics like ana microbials that that the fungus produces the
Speaker 1: ants will coat them their bodies with and it will
Speaker 1: prevent them from being infected as well. Yeah, and not
Speaker 1: only that, if they if they need to split off
Speaker 1: they don't like growings and fly up and have arab
Speaker 1: nuturals or whatever, they just leave. But just like you
Speaker 1: would carry the a sour dough mother, uh to your
Speaker 1: to your new bakery. They actually carry a big chunk
Speaker 1: of that fungus over to start their new crop in
Speaker 1: their new home. That's so cool. It's amazing, it really is,
Speaker 1: especially if you imagine the fungus having a face and
Speaker 1: talking right and also being really grateful for the help.
Speaker 1: I think in the in the in the movie they did,
Speaker 1: in the animated film they did. I think of it
Speaker 1: as kind of like looking like have you ever seen
Speaker 1: that movie basket Case? Have I seen what was that? No, terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible b horror movie from like the late seventies, yea,
Speaker 1: like the guy carried his brother around in a basket.
Speaker 1: I don't think I saw that, but I think I
Speaker 1: remember that when I worked at Vision Video in college.
Speaker 1: So bad. It's really really bad, But it looks kind
Speaker 1: of like a little piece of fungus that you would
Speaker 1: carry to a new ant cole. This is what kept
Speaker 1: flashing through my head. I wish you would get out
Speaker 1: of my head. But I need to look at that
Speaker 1: poster or that movie box because it's it's in my
Speaker 1: brain somewhere. I just can't call it up. Let's let's
Speaker 1: watch that movie together tonight. All right, let's do it.
Speaker 1: I'll truf butter. Oh man, you're making me hungry. You
Speaker 1: first you wanted a twinkie, Now you want some popcorn
Speaker 1: with truffle butter. Alright, what I really want to do
Speaker 1: is take a break and then we will finish up
Speaker 1: all about ants at least for now, unless we said,
Speaker 1: he come back and to this well again and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about how they communicate via these pheromones right after this. Okay, Chuck,
Speaker 1: So I think we said at the top of the
Speaker 1: first episode that pheromones are basically they may be the
Speaker 1: thing that ants use to to um to to carry
Speaker 1: out just about all of their individual behavior, which collectively,
Speaker 1: if you put millions of ants together doing the same thing,
Speaker 1: knowing what they're supposed to do, much more complex behaviors emerged.
Speaker 1: But it seems to largely come down to these pheromones,
Speaker 1: which are kind of like since um that the ants
Speaker 1: pick up kind of like noses using their antenna instead.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a language almost two. Because they're communicating.
Speaker 1: I mean we should also say that they also uh,
Speaker 1: they can like drum on their abdomen to raise an alarm.
Speaker 1: They can make different sounds like crickets. Uh, they can
Speaker 1: they can rub different parts of their body. They can
Speaker 1: rub their legs against their exoskeleton, is called stridulation. They
Speaker 1: can vibrate their mandibles. So they do sort of speak
Speaker 1: in some ways and here in some ways, But it
Speaker 1: seems like it seems almost secondary to what's going on
Speaker 1: with this this pheromone thing. Yeah, because there's just so
Speaker 1: many different pheromones, and they produce pheromones from a special
Speaker 1: scent gland um and the they you I don't know
Speaker 1: how they differentiate pheromones when they're producing them, but different
Speaker 1: It seems like they have different pheromones for different things
Speaker 1: that they're trying to signal, like there's an alarm signal. Um.
Speaker 1: They use pheromones to recruit some ants to go do
Speaker 1: something like if if one's maybe tending to the nest
Speaker 1: and another one needs help tunneling, it will it will
Speaker 1: create some pheromones signal and recruit the other aunt to
Speaker 1: come help. It um. They mark territory with it um.
Speaker 1: They will, uh, they will use it to discourage rivals,
Speaker 1: like if somebody's trying to lay eggs or cannibalize eggs.
Speaker 1: They can use pheromones for that kind of stuff. Basically
Speaker 1: almost all of their communications seems to be pheromones, and
Speaker 1: that communication is really varied and wide. Yeah. So a
Speaker 1: great example Dave uses is if there's an intruder, if
Speaker 1: like a spider comes upon an ant nest, the ants
Speaker 1: that see the spider come in that are I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, these soldier ants standing guard near the opening.
Speaker 1: They will start to admit the alarm pheromone I guess,
Speaker 1: along with beating on their abdomens uh for this alarm vibration,
Speaker 1: and then it becomes sort of like a game of telephone.
Speaker 1: The next closest ants here this stuff. Some of them might,
Speaker 1: depending on what their job is, rush up to help
Speaker 1: if they're like soldier ants or you know, or guard
Speaker 1: ants that will help guard the nest. Others run back
Speaker 1: and they admit pheromones to tell everyone else, and then
Speaker 1: they all start emitting pheromones, and it's essentially like a
Speaker 1: volume knob going up until everyone knows what's happening, or
Speaker 1: until the emergency is over or both. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: emergency is signaled as over because the pheromones start to
Speaker 1: ail off. And one of the things about pheromones that
Speaker 1: we understand is that they're volatile organic compounds, which means
Speaker 1: they dissipate fairly quickly because again they're volatile at room
Speaker 1: temperature in the air. Um So as long as you
Speaker 1: don't have a bunch of ants all pumping out this
Speaker 1: warning pheromone at the same time, the volume is going
Speaker 1: to start to dissipate and turn down, and eventually the
Speaker 1: the emergency subsides, and so the ants respond to pheromones,
Speaker 1: so their response to the pheromone is going to subside
Speaker 1: as well, and everything will go back to normal because
Speaker 1: the emergency is over right. So if you've ever uh
Speaker 1: and this happens to me, I don't have an ant
Speaker 1: problem here, but when we go to the lake sometimes, uh,
Speaker 1: we have ant problems there because it's out in the
Speaker 1: middle of the woods, of course. But I will, you know,
Speaker 1: clean up really good, I think at the end of
Speaker 1: the night, and if I leave a crumb of a
Speaker 1: Twinkie out there, I'll come back the next morning just
Speaker 1: infested with these long lines of ants. And I'm always like,
Speaker 1: how do they know it's there? How do tell everyone
Speaker 1: else it's there? And now I know it's pheromones. It's
Speaker 1: the same thing as if the spider invades, some ant
Speaker 1: sees this twinky crumb and amidst this pheromone, it's like, hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: there's some twinkie over here. Uh, you know, come eat
Speaker 1: and it eats a little bit and then amidst a pheromone.
Speaker 1: And that what's kind of remarkable is the pheromones. Um.
Speaker 1: It's not just a pheromone like they differ. They can
Speaker 1: differ what the pheromone is in the intensity of it
Speaker 1: to tell everyone, like what kind of food it is,
Speaker 1: or how much food there is, and how many of
Speaker 1: you should come and try to eat the crumb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no way that the ants at your lakehouse haven't
Speaker 1: developed a special pheromone for twinkies if you're leaving them
Speaker 1: out that much. No, so the and but just like
Speaker 1: with the emergency, like the the um, those other descriptions
Speaker 1: not just foods here, but this kind of food or
Speaker 1: this much food that can be um that can be
Speaker 1: described by like variations in the intensity. So if there's
Speaker 1: a lot of food, you know, of the ants really
Speaker 1: going to exclaim that there's a bunch of food with pheromones,
Speaker 1: it's gonna attract more ants and they're going to exclaim,
Speaker 1: and just like with that emergency alarm, the volume is
Speaker 1: going to be turned up. And then because it's a
Speaker 1: volatile organic compound, as the food depletes, the ants that
Speaker 1: are coming along and grabbing the food are going to
Speaker 1: leave a more and more muted exclamation, so that that
Speaker 1: trail is going to eventually dissipate and no ants going
Speaker 1: to follow it anymore because there's no food there anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it literally takes the place of the ant
Speaker 1: yelling back, hey, there's a lot of food, and then
Speaker 1: the last ant saying, hey, we pretty much ate everything.
Speaker 1: It's parties over. Yeah. Like they can't do that, So
Speaker 1: they use the pheromones, right, and they think that pheromones Again,
Speaker 1: it's really tough to to overstate the importance of them
Speaker 1: for for every kind of ant behavior. And there's a
Speaker 1: there's a m I'm not quite sure what what field
Speaker 1: that belongs to, but there's a concept called stigmer g
Speaker 1: which basically says that UM it describes a behavior or
Speaker 1: a trait or an action that's carried out based on
Speaker 1: some sort of signal that's left there. And so ants
Speaker 1: really respond to things like um if a litter made
Speaker 1: or a nest made is doing something, another ant is
Speaker 1: much more likely to do that same thing, and they
Speaker 1: think it's because the a signal is left. Every time
Speaker 1: and AUNT does something, it leaves a signal. Whether it's
Speaker 1: not doing it on purpose, it's not thinking about this,
Speaker 1: it's just part of this set of codes that ants follow,
Speaker 1: which if you run into this if if you are
Speaker 1: on a ball and there's water and you run into
Speaker 1: the edge of that ball, you form raft Like it's
Speaker 1: just this kind of binary set of very simple codes
Speaker 1: that ants seem to follow. And what code or what
Speaker 1: set of codes is triggered um depends on what pheromone
Speaker 1: the ant is either laying down for the next ant
Speaker 1: or is picking up from the last hand. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love lamp exactly. Uh. They also can communicate via touch.
Speaker 1: If you've ever uh gone to your kitchen counter like
Speaker 1: I have, and you've seen ants walking in a trail,
Speaker 1: you've probably seen a little two way street happening where
Speaker 1: a bunch of ants are going in one direction and
Speaker 1: a bunch of ants right next to him are going
Speaker 1: in the other direction. And if you look really really close,
Speaker 1: if you have like a magnifying glass, maybe you might
Speaker 1: notice the sunshine. Oh no, no, no, don't ever do that.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, just get down there with your eyeballs. Then, um,
Speaker 1: they might be touching each other. That might be there
Speaker 1: and intenta might be touching. They may be stroking each
Speaker 1: other's exoskeleton, and they Scientists basically think that these are
Speaker 1: also um communicative signals to one another again saying hey,
Speaker 1: there's some great twinkie over there. Sometimes someone might even
Speaker 1: have a little bit of a twinkie he'll give to
Speaker 1: someone midway through the line and say, hey, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: this is what's waiting down there. Pass it down, and
Speaker 1: that game of telephone happens again. Yeah, mouth to mouth
Speaker 1: food transfer it, which is nice, but I guess it's
Speaker 1: better than mouth ainus food transfer, like you were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier. Depends what you're into. I saw another explanation
Speaker 1: for why aunts do that, because if you look closely,
Speaker 1: pretty much every ant does that to every ant that
Speaker 1: they come across, going in the opposite direction. And I
Speaker 1: find one theory right now. One theory is that they're
Speaker 1: examining the ant to make sure it's one of their
Speaker 1: nest mates and not an intruder from another joining in
Speaker 1: the fun, which makes a lot of sense as well.
Speaker 1: Every time I see ants doing that, I just go
Speaker 1: in my head, good game, good game, good game game.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, that's one of my favorite parts of Days
Speaker 1: and Confused is just like the nostalgia. They're like any
Speaker 1: kid who's ever played Little knows that completely forced an
Speaker 1: enthusiastic good game line that you gotta walk down good stuff.
Speaker 1: What else do we have here? Oh boy, chok? We
Speaker 1: should we should um branch off into another standalone podcast
Speaker 1: called aunt rant. Uh all right, let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about nesting, and I think that's kind of
Speaker 1: all we've got. Um if you look and how they
Speaker 1: build their nest, you know, a lot of researchers have
Speaker 1: been looking at this. Uh. Speaking of which, this made
Speaker 1: me want to buy an aunt farm for my daughter
Speaker 1: for Christmas. But when I looked into him, I read
Speaker 1: reviews where it seems like about a third of the
Speaker 1: review said the ants just sat around and waited to
Speaker 1: die in front of my daughter or my son, and
Speaker 1: it was traumatic. I don't really agree with keeping anything enclosed,
Speaker 1: I know, I just the whole thing felt wrong, and
Speaker 1: so I didn't get it. Good for you, Jack, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a little selfish and that I didn't want
Speaker 1: a bad experience to happen. But then I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: you're also getting ants shipped through the mail. I know
Speaker 1: there shipped at a certain temperatures so they stay alive.
Speaker 1: And you know, also saw success stories were like, oh man,
Speaker 1: they did great and they lived their whole lifespan. But
Speaker 1: it just wasn't worth it at the risk. So anyone
Speaker 1: should do is order some of his answer the mail
Speaker 1: and just release them into your or just release them
Speaker 1: onto my daughter while she's asleep and immobile and see
Speaker 1: what happens. But researchers obviously have been studying ant nests
Speaker 1: and colonies for a long long time, and uh, you
Speaker 1: know all those tunnels that look like little sponges, mentioned
Speaker 1: the one on YouTube where they actually filled it with concrete,
Speaker 1: which is pretty amazing. But they decided to take this
Speaker 1: stuff and put it into like a computer model to
Speaker 1: see what what happened when it came out the other side.
Speaker 1: And one of the things they learned was they have
Speaker 1: these very basic rules that kind of governed everything they did,
Speaker 1: one of which was each ant would pick up at
Speaker 1: a very very steady rate two grains of dirt or
Speaker 1: sand per minute and carry it. Which that seems like
Speaker 1: a clue right there. If they're following some sort of
Speaker 1: time scale, especially if it corresponds to our understanding of time,
Speaker 1: that seems significant. You know, Yeah, I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: they would do that because that's the most efficient rate
Speaker 1: of work, like the most efficient speed of work I guess,
Speaker 1: like without getting overly tired or not getting enough done,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I think that's another example
Speaker 1: though that we like we watch ants do things and
Speaker 1: we don't understand exactly why, we just know it works
Speaker 1: really well. Yeah, uh, what else did they see? Um?
Speaker 1: They also saw that, um, there was a preference for
Speaker 1: dropping that grain that they were tunneling out excavating by
Speaker 1: another more another recently dropped piece of grain, which I
Speaker 1: think is an example of that stigma g where they
Speaker 1: there was like some yeah, they just saw like they're
Speaker 1: just their behaviors triggered by by somebody else's behavior. Right,
Speaker 1: And then the last thing they saw they saw these
Speaker 1: three basic rules, was they would drop them closer to
Speaker 1: the grains that were already dropped by another ant. And
Speaker 1: they think that it's like a pheromone marker, Like hey,
Speaker 1: I dropped this grain here, like this is where we're
Speaker 1: building this thing, right, And so they created this. They
Speaker 1: they followed these ants movements like they really studied and
Speaker 1: tracked real ants, and then they created a computer model
Speaker 1: that simulated ants just following these three rules. And apparently
Speaker 1: the model created something that looked a heck of a
Speaker 1: lot like an ant nest that you would see in
Speaker 1: in nature, so much so that there were connections that
Speaker 1: were developed between chambers. And these researchers were like, we
Speaker 1: didn't tell it to create connections that just happened on
Speaker 1: its own. It's a great example of that emergent behavior
Speaker 1: um that that comes from the collective actions of a
Speaker 1: bunch of individuals is doing their own thing. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: and they have these you know, if you look at
Speaker 1: this concrete when they excavated it was they have these
Speaker 1: big chambers. They have these tubes and then these big
Speaker 1: rooms basically, and each of these rooms as a function. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're not just like let's just make a little space here.
Speaker 1: You know. They take care of their dad a lot
Speaker 1: of times, and uh, you know, I don't think they
Speaker 1: quite bury them, but they tend to they're dead. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's remarkable. Yeah, they have aunt cemeteries that they
Speaker 1: dump bodies on. It's pretty cool, very cool. So there
Speaker 1: was one last thing I saw. Um there's a type
Speaker 1: of ant that basically engages in nursing where if you
Speaker 1: these ants raid termite mounds and the termites sometimes will
Speaker 1: take a leg or two, and if you're just missing
Speaker 1: a leg or two, you will be carried back by
Speaker 1: basically paramedic ants to the nest and then nursed back
Speaker 1: to health with an antibiotic that the ants produced themselves. Wow,
Speaker 1: aunt Rant, chuck, aunt Rant, You got anything else? I
Speaker 1: got nothing else? We think Joey, Joey from Tucson. Thanks Joey.
Speaker 1: Great idea, great idea for ants. We had no idea
Speaker 1: it was going to be a two parter in this
Speaker 1: remarkable remarkable indeed. And if you want to be like
Speaker 1: Joey and get in touch with us to let us
Speaker 1: know topic you'd like to suggest, who knows, it might
Speaker 1: even become an incredible two parter. You can reach out
Speaker 1: to us via email at stuff podcast at i heart
Speaker 1: radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. H