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 going to happen with them, maybe
Speaker 1: a refund maybe if you hold onto them, they're good
Speaker 1: for next year because we're probably gonna look in the
Speaker 1: same theater. But listen up for announcement soon. And again,
Speaker 1: all apologies, we're super sad about it. We're really looking
Speaker 1: forward to getting back out there again. But until further notice,
Speaker 1: live shows are still on hold. All right, now here
Speaker 1: we go with the show. Welcome to stuff you should
Speaker 1: know A production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Brian over there, and this is stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: um one that I'm super super excited about and didn't
Speaker 1: realize that I would be this excited about Chuck because
Speaker 1: this is a Chuck pick and hats off to you, sir.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised that, uh had you just never really thought
Speaker 1: about ants much? Yeah, I mean I've looked at them before,
Speaker 1: but I've never really researched him. I guess I've I've
Speaker 1: seen documentaries and then that of course, the animated cartoon
Speaker 1: Ants years ago kind of got me into it. And
Speaker 1: I feel like every time I've watched a Nature documentary
Speaker 1: about ants, I'm just like continually amazed. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: they are like amazing. I knew they were amazing, I
Speaker 1: just had no idea how amazing they were. Like so
Speaker 1: much so we could conceivably do a spinoff podcast on
Speaker 1: just ants, if you ask me, I'm willing to do that.
Speaker 1: I'm just putting it out there right now. Hey, you
Speaker 1: have fun and knock yourself out. No, no, it has
Speaker 1: to bebably the first one to subscribe it has to
Speaker 1: be both of us, I'm afraid. Uh, we do need
Speaker 1: to thank the original inspiration for this though, Joey from Tucson.
Speaker 1: Oh you remember that? Oh yeah, what was that a
Speaker 1: listener mail that came in? No, this was during our
Speaker 1: co Ed Oh yes, yes, yes, our friends at co
Speaker 1: ed auctioned off a zoom with Josh and I and
Speaker 1: some people were kind enough to donate some money and
Speaker 1: we had a zoom and we hung out with everyone
Speaker 1: and and and shot the s and Joey and his
Speaker 1: mom were on there from Tucson, and Joey said, why
Speaker 1: don't you do one on ants? And I said, all right, Joey,
Speaker 1: we'll do one on ants. Yeah, and that's gonna be
Speaker 1: a good one because joe is gonna get his money's
Speaker 1: worth on this. But we're doing Joey, not just one
Speaker 1: part on ants. We're doing a two parter on ants.
Speaker 1: That's how cool they are. It's a doublet because you
Speaker 1: know ants, like you said, we could do a four parter. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So just to kind of start like people I think
Speaker 1: can very easily take ants for granted, they're very small. Uh,
Speaker 1: they kind of typically mind their own business unless you
Speaker 1: step in one of their nests, and there they happen
Speaker 1: to be um uh imported red fire ants um which
Speaker 1: you do not want to mess with UM. So they're
Speaker 1: just kind of easy to overlook. But when you start
Speaker 1: to kind of dig into things like the number of
Speaker 1: ants on Earth or the kind of things they're responsible
Speaker 1: for on Earth, you come to realize, like, ants actually
Speaker 1: pretty much dominate the terrestrial ecosystems everywhere. They're apparently found
Speaker 1: everywhere except for Antarctica. Despite the name. Uh yeah, they're
Speaker 1: very hearty little creatures. They're a hundred and thirty million
Speaker 1: years old from the Cretaceous period, so they actually survived
Speaker 1: the Cretaceous tertiary extinction event, and you know, they've been
Speaker 1: around forever. They will be around forever. Some parts of
Speaker 1: the world they make up about half and this is
Speaker 1: places where there are lots and lots of insects, and
Speaker 1: they make up in some places half of the insects. Wow.
Speaker 1: So like, if you just took all the insects in
Speaker 1: one ecosystem and spread them all out, half of them
Speaker 1: would be ants. Half of them would be ants. Don't
Speaker 1: step on them. We said it before. Don't kick over
Speaker 1: those ant hills. Kids, don't torch them with with lighters
Speaker 1: and hairspray cans. You need to leave those ant hills alone, right.
Speaker 1: One other surprising thing about their evolutionary history that I
Speaker 1: was not hipp too until recently is that ants are
Speaker 1: um closely related to wasps. In fact, they think that
Speaker 1: they are evolved from wasps. Uh. And their closest one
Speaker 1: of their closest relatives is the mud Dauber wasp. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you look at the wasp, but it
Speaker 1: sort of looks like a intimidating flying ant. And ants
Speaker 1: have stingers. A lot of them have venom, so I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not like you just couldn't possibly, you know, accept
Speaker 1: that fact. That's right. Uh. And that is a bit
Speaker 1: of a misnomer because I still say bitten by an aunt,
Speaker 1: I got an ant bite, But that's not what's going on.
Speaker 1: You're actually getting stung. Uh. The stinger on an ant
Speaker 1: a is a is a modified ovipositor. And the little
Speaker 1: worker ants we're gonna talk all about this later, but
Speaker 1: worker ants are sterile females. They can't produce eggs, so
Speaker 1: they're ovipositors or stingers, and the male ants don't have
Speaker 1: stingers and as you'll see, like if you're at all
Speaker 1: familiar with our b episode or a WASPS episode, like,
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff is gonna seem really familiar
Speaker 1: again because their ants are kind of pretty closely related
Speaker 1: to those things. They're in the same um, the same
Speaker 1: order hyman up tera as we'll see. But they do
Speaker 1: all sorts of amazing things that we're gonna get into
Speaker 1: all of this. But are uh. They turn the soil,
Speaker 1: they move um uh materials and energy up and down underground.
Speaker 1: They turn over more soil than the earthworm. Um. They're
Speaker 1: extremely important little animals running around on Earth. So the
Speaker 1: next time you see an aunt, especially after you hear
Speaker 1: these two episodes, hopefully you'll salute them or at least
Speaker 1: step over them or do something to to show a
Speaker 1: little bit of respect. How many ants are there, so,
Speaker 1: I've seen the one that can Ruse. Dave Ruse helped
Speaker 1: us out with this one. The number he came up with,
Speaker 1: I've seen pretty much almost everywhere, which is something on
Speaker 1: the order of ten to the fifteen power adult ants
Speaker 1: on Earth right now, So about a quadrillion, which is
Speaker 1: it's not just a number of four year old says, no,
Speaker 1: it's a thousand trillion to be precise, which is that
Speaker 1: sounds more like a number than a four year old says, right,
Speaker 1: if you, if you, I mean, if you think about it, Um,
Speaker 1: how many humans are we do we have on right now?
Speaker 1: Something like seven eight billion? I believe sure this is
Speaker 1: a thousand trillion ants. And there's a lot of debate also,
Speaker 1: chuck about which one weighs more calculating the bio mat
Speaker 1: It's all over the place. One of the one of
Speaker 1: the figures I've seen bandied about is that ants, if you,
Speaker 1: if you wait everything, every living thing on Earth, ants
Speaker 1: would make up somewhere between fifteen to of that weight,
Speaker 1: which is a lot. But a lot of people say, well,
Speaker 1: that's that just completely dwarfs how the biomass of humans.
Speaker 1: And that's not necessarily true, so it's kind of up
Speaker 1: in the air. Yeah, let's put it this way. If
Speaker 1: all of the ants got together and they decided they
Speaker 1: wanted to go to war with humanity, it would be
Speaker 1: a pretty intimidating fight. I'm not sure who would win,
Speaker 1: but humans would probably lay wasted themselves to to lay
Speaker 1: wasted the ants, you know what I mean? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and also I mean some ants especially those red fire ants.
Speaker 1: They eat flesh like its are not all just herbivores,
Speaker 1: they're they're generally omnivores, which means that they'll eat eat
Speaker 1: flesh as well, which means they'll eat human flesh if
Speaker 1: you'll stand still long enough and let them devour you.
Speaker 1: You know what's that fire ant? They can strip a
Speaker 1: frog in twelve hours to the bone to the bone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty amazing. So the thing we have going for us,
Speaker 1: our legs are much longer than an ant's leg so
Speaker 1: we can outrun them very quickly and just get away
Speaker 1: from an ant, and then by the time we're out
Speaker 1: of it's it's per view, it forgot we ever existed, probably, right,
Speaker 1: unless there's another colony of three million ants waiting for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the other side, depending on what part of Europe you're
Speaker 1: in there very well, maybe too, as we'll see. Right,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna you know, this is gonna follow the
Speaker 1: order of kind of our usual animally insect the episodes,
Speaker 1: except I think this one's going to have even more
Speaker 1: just sort of random amazing facts and started along the way, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think we'll be able to help it, alright,
Speaker 1: So I guess let's talk. I mean, let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and start off with some of these amazing ant things.
Speaker 1: If you study ants, you're a a mermacologist. And it
Speaker 1: feels like we've said that recently, but I think I
Speaker 1: might be thinking of something else. Dude, thinking of Eugene Mermon,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm thinking. Oh man, I love that guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a very lovable guy. What a good dude. I'm
Speaker 1: so glad of his Bob's Burger's success. It couldn't happen
Speaker 1: to do a nicer guy. But he's not an ant specialist. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's maybe let's just start off with these aunt rafts. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: that's one of the amazing things that people have figured
Speaker 1: out about ants is if you drop especially um red
Speaker 1: imported fire ants. They're just called fire ants in their
Speaker 1: native South America, but here in North America there they
Speaker 1: really are honestly called red imported fire ants, and they
Speaker 1: if you drop them into water as like a ball,
Speaker 1: they'll spread out and they will flatten themselves into a
Speaker 1: raft that is actually a pretty great, well made raft.
Speaker 1: And they do this, um just kind of without even
Speaker 1: thinking about it. Yeah. So, I mean, these things can
Speaker 1: be large they can be about as big as a
Speaker 1: dinner plate. We're talking hundreds of thousands of ants. And
Speaker 1: what they've learned. There was this researcher in particular at
Speaker 1: Georgia Tech that you dug up, I mean not literally
Speaker 1: dug up. He well, yeah, he was dead when I
Speaker 1: meant reanimated him. Uh and said Mr David, who what
Speaker 1: do you have to say? Uh? So he I think
Speaker 1: he's from Georgia Tech. And he focused on these rafts
Speaker 1: because it's such an amazing thing. And what they learned,
Speaker 1: or one of the things he learned, was that when
Speaker 1: these ants are building out this raft, they're like basically
Speaker 1: walking over the other ants until they get to the
Speaker 1: edge and then they're like, oh, well, I guess you know,
Speaker 1: they communicate to each other, and we'll get to how
Speaker 1: they communicate later, but they communicate to each other only
Speaker 1: when they get to that edge. Hey, you gotta get
Speaker 1: down here with us and make this thing larger. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they and they basically weave themselves into an interlocking pattern
Speaker 1: to where they lay down perpendicular to the the ant
Speaker 1: that is the part of the edge of the raft.
Speaker 1: Then and then they become the part of the raft.
Speaker 1: Sticking out right, yeah, exactly, and they connect themselves to
Speaker 1: their fellow ants with multi multiple places with their interlocking arms.
Speaker 1: They also push away at the same time, which allows
Speaker 1: a lot of air in there, and these rafts can
Speaker 1: float because there's something like air. But the the weave
Speaker 1: is also so tight that the raft is waterproof, so
Speaker 1: that even the ants on the bottom of the raft chuck,
Speaker 1: will survive when they eventually hit dry land. Again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they kind of likened it to gortex basically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that is that is one thing that one species
Speaker 1: of ants can do, and they do this. Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: Like you might say, well, that's really neat, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: Ants don't have brains that can hold plans in their
Speaker 1: heads like you and I do. Like, they can't read
Speaker 1: a schematic. There's no schematics there for them. And in fact,
Speaker 1: ants don't even technically have a leader. They just all
Speaker 1: do these jobs and perform this work somehow we humans
Speaker 1: have still yet to figure it out. But as each
Speaker 1: little ant performs its own job, and you've got hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of millions of ants all doing this job
Speaker 1: following the same system, these really amazing larger and more
Speaker 1: complex patterns emerge, and that's how you get things like
Speaker 1: ant colonies and aunt rafts. And they do it again
Speaker 1: without a leader and without a brain that could hold
Speaker 1: a plan in their head. Yeah, I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty million years of hard coding basically.
Speaker 1: Like it makes me wonder if a hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: million years ago, the ants we're like lucky to survive
Speaker 1: that tertiary extinction, and we're like, we gotta get our
Speaker 1: act together, guys. Yeah, we need to figure out how
Speaker 1: to make rafts quick. We can't make rafts. We can't
Speaker 1: do anything. Um Ants individually can swim some speech he
Speaker 1: s can uh, they basically I mean they can float
Speaker 1: and they basically do like a little ant paddle. They
Speaker 1: like him to do a dog paddle. I don't think
Speaker 1: they can swim like great distances. But if an ant,
Speaker 1: if some species of ant happened to accidentally fall into water,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily the end of them. They're not a goner.
Speaker 1: They don't need to be reanimated yet they don't. Should
Speaker 1: we take a break already? Yeah? I think we can.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a two part or we can do
Speaker 1: whatever we want. All right, we'll take a break and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about not rafts, but bridges right after this. Okay, Chuck,
Speaker 1: you teased bridges. What about bridges? What do what do
Speaker 1: bridges have to do with ants? Well, I mean, first
Speaker 1: of all, all this stuff you should you should look
Speaker 1: up images and videos of when you can, because talking
Speaker 1: about it is one thing. But when you really see
Speaker 1: this stuff happening, when you see an ant raft or
Speaker 1: an ant bridge, it's pretty remarkable. Um. But army ants.
Speaker 1: There in a species of ant that we're going to
Speaker 1: talk more about as well later. But they are nomadic. Um.
Speaker 1: Usually ants kind of route down in one place, but
Speaker 1: these ants like to travel. And when they're traveling through
Speaker 1: the forest, if they come across uh, if they're like
Speaker 1: walking up a leaf and then they want to get
Speaker 1: across to another leaf, they will form a little almost
Speaker 1: at human bridge, they form a little ant bridge all
Speaker 1: the way across and can support you know, it's just
Speaker 1: tens of centimeters, which doesn't sound like much, but when
Speaker 1: you're an aunt, it's it's remarkable. Yeah, So there's something
Speaker 1: going on here. You you'll start to notice like there's
Speaker 1: something about an ant when it says Okay, I'm coming.
Speaker 1: I'm in water, and I'm on a ball of other
Speaker 1: ants in water. Now that I've reached the edge of water,
Speaker 1: or I need to interlock with my partner. Same thing
Speaker 1: when they reach it an end in the road, a
Speaker 1: gap between the road or the bridge or whatever they're
Speaker 1: walking on, they have some sort of encoded instinct to
Speaker 1: lay down and interlock with whoever's part of the bridge
Speaker 1: behind them to form their own part of their bridge.
Speaker 1: And then even more astounding than that kind of behavior
Speaker 1: is the fact that they can support the weight of
Speaker 1: the ants crawling over them, using them as a bridge,
Speaker 1: and then once the traffic dies down, they climb back
Speaker 1: up like in the opposite direction, they disassemble the bridge
Speaker 1: on the other way and then go along their merry
Speaker 1: way on the forest floor. Yeah, that's when they say
Speaker 1: socialism doesn't work. Um, but I was wondering how they
Speaker 1: So I saw an aunt bridge spanning between two leaves,
Speaker 1: so it was off the ground. Uh, how does it?
Speaker 1: And the only thing I could figure like, how does it?
Speaker 1: How did the how do they all get across to
Speaker 1: the other side at the end of this whole thing?
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know. I don't because you think
Speaker 1: it'd be like one of those rope bridges where you
Speaker 1: cut one in and it goes right. Well, I think
Speaker 1: that might be what happens. But I mean, this is
Speaker 1: just a guess, but I have a feeling at the
Speaker 1: end of that bridge they all just go really fast
Speaker 1: as after it disattaches to get to And if they're
Speaker 1: strong enough to hold each other across the span, then
Speaker 1: I guess they're strong enough to hold that last you know,
Speaker 1: a few centimeters as it dangles. Right. Yeah, they seem
Speaker 1: to make like preternaturally intelligent use of things like physics
Speaker 1: and enforces and loads and all sorts of stuff, um
Speaker 1: and And to be honest, like, I don't feel like
Speaker 1: a jackass for not knowing the answer to what you're saying,
Speaker 1: because we do not understand ants very well. It's more
Speaker 1: like we're we humans are in the the g whiz
Speaker 1: phase of studying ants, like we can't we can see
Speaker 1: what they're doing, but we can't really explain how they're
Speaker 1: doing it in a lot of cases, which makes them
Speaker 1: even more fascinating to me. But but Chuck, I suspect
Speaker 1: and once we fully understand ants, it will revolutionize our
Speaker 1: own behavior and the way that we see the world,
Speaker 1: in the way that we act ourselves, because we're gonna
Speaker 1: learn a lot from them. Oh yeah, but the problem
Speaker 1: is humans don't won't work together like that, because ants
Speaker 1: are a selfless society that works in concert to accomplish
Speaker 1: a greater goal. Maybe we'll figure out how to use
Speaker 1: them to like more efficiently deliver packages from e commerce
Speaker 1: for us. Right, that's not flying them and dropping them
Speaker 1: from a drone, even more efficient than that. All right,
Speaker 1: So that's that's just a bit of a tease of
Speaker 1: some of the amazing things some species of ants can do.
Speaker 1: I think we need to get down to kind of
Speaker 1: the basics, uh, like we do with all of our
Speaker 1: insect friends and animal friends, and just talk about the
Speaker 1: makeup of these little guys. Yeah, so their insects, like
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, there from the order him up terra.
Speaker 1: So there's bees, wasps, ants, they're all pretty much in
Speaker 1: the same little group right there. But there's at least
Speaker 1: ten thousand species of ants. Apparently, some botanists, not botanists
Speaker 1: who don't know what they're talking about, we'll say fourteen thousand,
Speaker 1: and then some anomalogists will say Yeah, the botanist was right.
Speaker 1: Fourteen thousand is how many species of ants there are.
Speaker 1: Botanists are like, why they keep cutting my leaves? Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you please ask your aunts to stop doing that?
Speaker 1: That's what the botanists say. Uh. If we're talking, and again,
Speaker 1: you know, since we're not starting our own side podcast
Speaker 1: all about ants, we're gonna talk about a few different species.
Speaker 1: Aunt rant, by the way, aunt Rant not in rhnd
Speaker 1: aunt Rant featuring the works of vine Rand instead of
Speaker 1: listener male, who is the opposite of ants actually, But
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about the main ones you might find
Speaker 1: here in North America. One of course, is the odorous
Speaker 1: house aunt a k a. The sugar ant or the
Speaker 1: coconut ant. These are you know, I love ants, but
Speaker 1: these the problem uh ants in my life occasionally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are the little black ants that you know, if
Speaker 1: you have something out on your counter, can come into
Speaker 1: your house and a nice little single file line and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about those lines later, and they will eat
Speaker 1: whatever you have sitting out on the counter, if it's
Speaker 1: a little crumb of a twinkie, which makes me really
Speaker 1: want to eat a twinkie. I haven't done that in
Speaker 1: year's probably since our Twinky episodes, but it will. They
Speaker 1: will send a lot of ants after it. Uh. And
Speaker 1: they they're called odorous because apparently I've never really noticed
Speaker 1: a smell. But if you kill them, they smell like
Speaker 1: a rotten coconut or like a blue cheesy odor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, rotten coconut doesn't help at all, Like
Speaker 1: I don't understand when the rotten coconut smells like blue cheese.
Speaker 1: I understand more that I get that's not a good smell.
Speaker 1: But I have never ever smelled an ant that smelled
Speaker 1: like blue cheese or even rotten coconut. I haven't either,
Speaker 1: and I try not to kill any ants, but uh,
Speaker 1: invading uh, sugar ants can be a problem. Yes, sugar ants,
Speaker 1: That's what I've always heard them called too, So that's
Speaker 1: the odorous house aunt is the same thing as a
Speaker 1: sugar ant. Yeah right, okay, because we don't We're not
Speaker 1: like very bourgeois. We keep our sugar just on a
Speaker 1: mound on the kitchen counter. And we have a big
Speaker 1: problem with those ants too. Yeah. What about your next favorite,
Speaker 1: the pavement aunt? Uh? Yeah, the malcolmus Uh, the stand
Speaker 1: of viches? Right? If only um, they are the ones
Speaker 1: that you find like on the sidewalk, mainly maybe under rocks.
Speaker 1: And I don't think there are a whole lot different
Speaker 1: than the odorous house aunt are they I honestly don't know.
Speaker 1: I think maybe they don't come in your house. They're
Speaker 1: more like they just hang out outside on the sidewalk.
Speaker 1: You know, Yes, I like that, Babs. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I think what the describes is like where, Yeah, where
Speaker 1: you'll find them like understones and sidewalks and all. Because
Speaker 1: a lot of ants, like more than just the payment ant,
Speaker 1: make their nest under concrete. I'm not sure why, maybe
Speaker 1: just for protection or whatever from the elements, but there
Speaker 1: are plenty of ants that that seem to appreciate concrete
Speaker 1: slabs and for nesting. You got your carpenter ant, which
Speaker 1: are those big daddies. Uh, they will bore into wood.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there is a bigger problem as termites.
Speaker 1: I haven't really found them to be in mind own life.
Speaker 1: But yeah, no, those are the ones I grew up with.
Speaker 1: They're like there's yes, they're enormous ants, but they're almost
Speaker 1: like friendly, like they do not they don't sting you.
Speaker 1: I think they might be a sting or list. They're
Speaker 1: they're certainly not venomous. They'll like crawl on your finger
Speaker 1: and just kind of explore and you almost can make
Speaker 1: friends with them. Weirdly, but they're they're the friendliest ants
Speaker 1: I've ever encountered. Yeah, I'll do that. If I see
Speaker 1: a carpenter ant, I'll put my finger down and see
Speaker 1: if it wants to come up and say. You know,
Speaker 1: I've never seen one down here. I've only I've only
Speaker 1: seen them in no I Oh, I didn't even know
Speaker 1: they were down here. Oh oh yeah, we got carpenter ants.
Speaker 1: So once I did know we're down here, I found
Speaker 1: out the hard way. Um, right after we moved down here,
Speaker 1: I realized that I was standing in a pile of
Speaker 1: carpiner ants. And um, that was my introduction to them,
Speaker 1: like maybe a month or two after we moved down
Speaker 1: to the south. Oh no, no no carpenter ants or fire
Speaker 1: fire ants. Did I say carpenter Yeah yeah, No, no,
Speaker 1: I mean fire ants. Yeah, those are no good. Um again,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna like try and kill their nest or
Speaker 1: anything like that. You just avoid them. Basically, It's true.
Speaker 1: It is true. It is true. That's that's true. But
Speaker 1: like you say, if you happen to step on one um,
Speaker 1: they can be pretty aggressive though. They'll come after me,
Speaker 1: and they will, they'll just keep going after you. And
Speaker 1: again it looks like they're biting you because it hurts
Speaker 1: and it stings, and they're they're like they're biting their mandibles.
Speaker 1: But you can't feel whatever bite they're giving you with
Speaker 1: their mandibles because they're too small. That stinger that that's
Speaker 1: getting you in the venom that they produce inside. That's right,
Speaker 1: no good, very painful. Leave a little red bumps, yeah,
Speaker 1: to say the least, and then the itch and and
Speaker 1: then you can't help but scratch them and you scratch
Speaker 1: whatever little welt grows up after them. It's you scratch
Speaker 1: that off. It's not it's not good. Did you get
Speaker 1: stung a lot when you when you were standing in one, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah it was. It was really bad. Mama got the
Speaker 1: same treatment to when she was a little puppy and
Speaker 1: she made the worst sound of ever heard in my life.
Speaker 1: And luckily you may had just done some research on
Speaker 1: fire ants and found that if you um are ever
Speaker 1: covered in fire ants, do not wash them off, because
Speaker 1: I think those might be the kind that swim, but
Speaker 1: also they that will make them clean even further to
Speaker 1: whatever they can on your body. To stand there and
Speaker 1: take the pain. You brush them off till they're done.
Speaker 1: But yeah, right, exactly, just eat the pain, right, It
Speaker 1: won't last long, but you brush them off with your hand.
Speaker 1: Do not use water, because it actually makes them like
Speaker 1: they It's one of those things where they're like, oh
Speaker 1: doubts with water, hang on even tighter, like they're making
Speaker 1: a raft with your leg, and then they're biding even worse.
Speaker 1: So luckily you had told me that like a week before,
Speaker 1: and my instinct I was walking MO near this pond.
Speaker 1: My instinct was to basically just dunker in this pond
Speaker 1: reils get a bunch of pond water on it to
Speaker 1: rint it off. And I stopped myself and just brushed
Speaker 1: them off. But it would have made it so much worse.
Speaker 1: But um Mo doesn't like if iire ants either. Now
Speaker 1: Mo probably doesn't like being tunked in a pond either.
Speaker 1: Just like like on a nice walk, you were going
Speaker 1: to do what to me when I was um I
Speaker 1: guess we should talk about you know, we're gonna we
Speaker 1: gotta talk about mouth parts. This part of stuff you
Speaker 1: should know. Uh, so you gotta. If we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about the ants, body will go from the head backward.
Speaker 1: The head has those two antennae and they you know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna say things like smell and here with quotation marks,
Speaker 1: with air quotes, scare quotes like air quotes. But that's
Speaker 1: the antennae is what they used to smell, or their
Speaker 1: version of smelling. Uh. And pheromones and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to in greater detail later on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which seemed to be basically the way that they communicate.
Speaker 1: They communicate a few other ways, which we'll talk about,
Speaker 1: but those pheromones are aces as far as ant communication goes,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. They also have um. Sometimes they'll have
Speaker 1: multiple kinds of eyes. Some ants have compound eyes, which
Speaker 1: have tons of different lenses and you know, the image
Speaker 1: on each lens is kind of combined into an image
Speaker 1: in the ant's brain. Or other ones have much more
Speaker 1: simple eyes called ocelli roselli um, which are they just
Speaker 1: basically sense light. And then some ants have both um.
Speaker 1: But the ones who just have a celli are are
Speaker 1: almost blind. But it don't feel bad for the ants
Speaker 1: because they are they can sense other things like pheromones
Speaker 1: with their antennae. That's right. Uh, We've talked about the
Speaker 1: mandibles a little bit, but those are the little pincers
Speaker 1: at the fry and uh boys, some of the mandibles
Speaker 1: and some of these species of ant are really large
Speaker 1: and scary looking. I can't remember which one, but I
Speaker 1: saw one picture. It may have been the Australian one
Speaker 1: that just will kill you, basically the bulldog ant. It
Speaker 1: might have been the bulldog ant. Yes, I saw that
Speaker 1: picture to where it actually uses its mandibles to clamp
Speaker 1: onto at the same time it's stinging you two man,
Speaker 1: and it has taken at least three lives um in
Speaker 1: Australia that's been documented. The bulldog ant just another Australian
Speaker 1: thing that can kill you. But so as bad as
Speaker 1: the bulldog ant is, apparently the bullet ant is has
Speaker 1: the worst sting, not just of any aunt, but of
Speaker 1: anything you could possibly be stung by in the world. Now,
Speaker 1: what's the deal with that one? I saw? So there's
Speaker 1: something called the Schmidt pain scale that was developed by
Speaker 1: a guy named Justin Schmidt, and he he sically just
Speaker 1: let himself get stung and then rated it and described
Speaker 1: this stuff that was that's what he did. We're gonna
Speaker 1: do a short stuff on it someday, but he gave
Speaker 1: he gave the bullet ant the UM level four rating
Speaker 1: on his words, which is four which is the highest,
Speaker 1: which as bad as it gets UM. But he's he
Speaker 1: described it as like walking over flaming charcoal with a
Speaker 1: three inch nail embedded in your heel. That's what a
Speaker 1: bullet ant sting feels like. And it's apparently other people
Speaker 1: who have. If you go on YouTube, like survivalists and
Speaker 1: outdoor people, they will go get They'll find out, like,
Speaker 1: what's the most painful sting you can get, and then
Speaker 1: they'll go purposely get stung by it and then describe it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like people eating like ghost peppers on
Speaker 1: YouTube videos, but with with insects and apparently um most
Speaker 1: people who have been stung by a bullet ant agree
Speaker 1: like that's it's as bad as it gets. Cheeze. I
Speaker 1: found this one aunt uh. If we're talking mandibles, the
Speaker 1: uh that's had supposedly has the fastest bite in the world,
Speaker 1: the Latin American trap jaw ant, and it uses it's
Speaker 1: mandible to jump. So if you look at videos. They
Speaker 1: basically thought this is what was happening, but they weren't
Speaker 1: sure because these things can really leap like, you know,
Speaker 1: three or four inches across the room, and they filmed
Speaker 1: it with a super SlowMo up close camera, and their
Speaker 1: their bite is so fast. It accelerates a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: times the force of gravity a hundred and forty five
Speaker 1: miles per hour with a force equaling five d times
Speaker 1: its body weight. So I think it just pinches down
Speaker 1: in the ground so fast it shoots the ant back
Speaker 1: out of harm's way or whatever. Okay, So that's what
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out. If it does like
Speaker 1: a cartwheel or summer salt, so it bites and propels
Speaker 1: itself backward. Yeah, and they they will somersault, I mean,
Speaker 1: because I don't think they have control, like after they
Speaker 1: there's so much force and speed, Like I saw SloMo
Speaker 1: videos of them, Like if they're falling down in a
Speaker 1: little hole in the sand or something, they'll snap that
Speaker 1: jaw and they will just slow mo back flip like
Speaker 1: four or five inches out of that thing. And it
Speaker 1: makes us did it should It's pretty amazing the trap giant,
Speaker 1: It is amazing. Um so that's all in the head, right,
Speaker 1: You got your eyes, your mandibles, your mouth. There's a
Speaker 1: little mouth that I mean, the ant has to eat
Speaker 1: and everything. They don't have ears, we should point out
Speaker 1: if we're talking about the head, but they do here
Speaker 1: by way of vibration. I think there's a an organ
Speaker 1: below the knee that senses vibration below the knee. I
Speaker 1: didn't see that one man. That just keeps getting better
Speaker 1: and better. Okay, So you move a little further back
Speaker 1: on the ant and what you'll find is the next
Speaker 1: little segment of the body called the mesa soma, which
Speaker 1: is not particularly interesting other than the fact that this
Speaker 1: is where the ants three pairs of legs, it's six
Speaker 1: legs come together on the ant. So it's super muscular
Speaker 1: because is how the ant propels itself forward and does
Speaker 1: all sorts of neat things, climbing hand to hand, combat,
Speaker 1: all carrying, all sorts of stuff. So it's very muscular
Speaker 1: part of the ant. The messisoma, yes, very mustily. Uh,
Speaker 1: you have the petty hole, which is the basically the
Speaker 1: waste of the ant between the messisoma and the gaster.
Speaker 1: But if you see, you know, you can see an
Speaker 1: ant kind of stand up at the waist where it's
Speaker 1: little front legs are off the ground. It's it's bending
Speaker 1: there at the pettyole. Yeah, it's kind of like you
Speaker 1: know those busses that are like two busses but they're
Speaker 1: connected by some weird like membrane and when they turn
Speaker 1: a corner you're like, oh god, oh god, oh god.
Speaker 1: But then they pull it off somehow. That to me
Speaker 1: is like the pettyole for the ant. I've never ridden
Speaker 1: on one of those buses. It's not it doesn't look
Speaker 1: like it's held together any better when you're inside the bus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks a lot of city buses. I will say, though,
Speaker 1: Traveler's tip Emily Nights, I think it's this Before we
Speaker 1: took a bus in Manhattan one time, which we had
Speaker 1: never done before. We were always on the subway or
Speaker 1: in a cab or something, and we happened to be
Speaker 1: somewhere and we needed to get somewhere else and we
Speaker 1: saw the bus and I said, I think we can
Speaker 1: just get on this thing and it'll take us where
Speaker 1: we want to go. And it was like it was
Speaker 1: like a it felt like a tourist bus. It's like
Speaker 1: it's a great way to see the city bus. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I was like it was red and I sat on
Speaker 1: the roof. They didn't have a roof on the toime. No,
Speaker 1: it was a regular city bus. But that's my point
Speaker 1: is like for very little money, the only difference is
Speaker 1: there's not some dummy with a microphone telling you about everything,
Speaker 1: but a knowledgeable bus driver will tell you where some
Speaker 1: of the stars live. Yeah, or at least where you're
Speaker 1: stopping next. Sure. Yeah, sit down and shut up. That's
Speaker 1: what they say. Uh, where are we are? We think?
Speaker 1: I think the petty all. We didn't mention that some
Speaker 1: of them have two of these wastes. Yeah, the petiole.
Speaker 1: If you want to show off as an ant, you
Speaker 1: might have two of them. Be like, look at it.
Speaker 1: I can go two different ways at once. Watch me go. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you have the gaster And that's that rear part.
Speaker 1: That's where the organs are house. That's where the heart is.
Speaker 1: Although it does not pump blood, it has a colorless liquid.
Speaker 1: There are no lungs In't that right? Yeah? They breathe um.
Speaker 1: They basically just do um oxygen exchange oxygen carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: exchange to little holes that they have all over their
Speaker 1: body called spiricles, that's right, and those are connected through
Speaker 1: network of tubes. And I think just the ants movement
Speaker 1: is what makes that air exchange happen. It's very cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The gaster makes the mesasoma feel really inadequate as far
Speaker 1: as no just importance and the stuff that it's doing,
Speaker 1: you know, because it has so much important stuff in
Speaker 1: it almost got the heart, It's got that stinger, the
Speaker 1: reproductive organs. Some ants can spray formic acid from their gaster.
Speaker 1: If you come up to an ant in your aunt's size,
Speaker 1: it'll just spray it in your face with acid and
Speaker 1: say get back wow. And then what if it's a
Speaker 1: what do you say? A trapped orient? It'll just spring
Speaker 1: away completely out of sight in the blink of an eye,
Speaker 1: in the blink tupp pound. I yeah, I like trap
Speaker 1: door though. I bet there's a trapped orient. But what's
Speaker 1: what's it called the trap jaw? And oh? I called
Speaker 1: a trap do orient? Yeah? But I bet there's a
Speaker 1: I guarantee you there's a trapped orient. I was thinking
Speaker 1: of Castlevania just then. Uh. They have two stomachs generally,
Speaker 1: and they one is for eating and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: digesting their own food, but there they also will share food,
Speaker 1: and that's what that second stomach is for, because they
Speaker 1: practice trophylaxis, is when they exchange food with their like
Speaker 1: if you know, you go out and forage, but the
Speaker 1: other ants are back there working on taking or the
Speaker 1: queen or whatever they gotta eat, so they'll bring back
Speaker 1: food in their second stomach and then transfer it either
Speaker 1: mouth to mouth or mouth to anus. Pretty nice, Pretty nice.
Speaker 1: It is very very kind. If you think about it,
Speaker 1: you know, it really is. So one of the things
Speaker 1: you talked about earlier. I think when we're talking about
Speaker 1: ant bridges um and how they can support so much weight,
Speaker 1: partially it's because they have, like most insects, kitan exo
Speaker 1: skeleton that can um that can withstand forces like three
Speaker 1: thousand times greater than the ant's body weight. So that's
Speaker 1: how you let ants walk all over you if you're
Speaker 1: another aunt without even batting an eyelash. That's right. And
Speaker 1: they are super super super strong um. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know there are a lot of insects that can do
Speaker 1: whatever x times their body weight, but it's tough to
Speaker 1: beat the ant. As a general rule, some of them
Speaker 1: can carry up to fifty times their own body weight,
Speaker 1: and apparently it's due to the due to their small size.
Speaker 1: And the reading I got from this was that their
Speaker 1: muscles are just dns. They have a greater cross sectional
Speaker 1: area relative to their body size compared to other kind
Speaker 1: of all other animals. So I think that's just like
Speaker 1: a really dense muscle. That's pretty cool. So they're muscular
Speaker 1: and they have a strong excess skeleton. They're just tough,
Speaker 1: that's right. And like you said, they could be found everywhere.
Speaker 1: Um So I say we take our second break now
Speaker 1: and then come back and talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: what ant eat, what aunt eat. We'll be right back, okay, Chuck.
Speaker 1: So we came back to talk about what ant eat,
Speaker 1: and um, I think I said earlier the answer omnivorous. Right,
Speaker 1: So that means they'll eat flesh, Like don't fool yourself.
Speaker 1: Given given a chance, if you lay still long enough,
Speaker 1: or if somebody stakes you to the ground and slithers
Speaker 1: you in honey around some red fire ants, they will
Speaker 1: eat your body. It'll be so well, so will your dog,
Speaker 1: your dog with two don't be mad at your dog.
Speaker 1: Your dogs just trying to stay alive. And it's always
Speaker 1: just been curious what you tasted like, you know, oh man,
Speaker 1: anytime you hear the stories, it's just so disturbing. He
Speaker 1: really is like the dog that eats the person that
Speaker 1: was just like in a bad drunk or whatever. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: passed out. No, I haven't. I'm not gonna tell it,
Speaker 1: but I know I know someone personally who their dog
Speaker 1: the eight part of their they're not there, but someone
Speaker 1: they live their roommates foot because the roommates foot was
Speaker 1: asleep and they were passed out like a down to
Speaker 1: the close to the bone. Wow. I know. It's disturbing. Wow,
Speaker 1: and you know somebody. Yeah, I'm not gonna get into
Speaker 1: all that, but it's it's it's somebody I know. But
Speaker 1: it's not like somebody you know from like the snoop
Speaker 1: something like. It's a person, a personal human who told
Speaker 1: me this happened to them and their roommate. It's not
Speaker 1: a friend of a friend of a friend kind of thing.
Speaker 1: What happens to the dog after that that they keep
Speaker 1: the dog? Yeah, yeah, it's the whole thing afterwards. Alright,
Speaker 1: good lord, the dog's fine. But I'll tell you, okay,
Speaker 1: I did not see this counting at all. I didn't either,
Speaker 1: because we're talking again about ants, and ants, like I said,
Speaker 1: are omnivorous. Right. I don't even know how I got
Speaker 1: on this. I think if you lay still long enough
Speaker 1: and ant will eat you down to the bone. That's
Speaker 1: what we're talking. So will your your friend's roommates. Uh well,
Speaker 1: it's actually my friends dogged. But that's a difference. Oh man,
Speaker 1: that makes it even worse. So wait, your friend's dog
Speaker 1: at your friend's roommates foot Uh huh how do you
Speaker 1: apologize for that? I don't know, man, it's a weird
Speaker 1: scene over at this place. There's no cookie cake that
Speaker 1: they make for that. Oh boy, the cookie cake might help,
Speaker 1: but I mean help, sure, but you just have to
Speaker 1: get a generic one. Maybe one of those milk bar
Speaker 1: Jest buys that might do it. Really, anything from milk
Speaker 1: bar would work. I agree. Uh so, honey, Due, let's
Speaker 1: talk about honey Due. I think that's how we can
Speaker 1: get back on track. Let's talk about it. Have you
Speaker 1: ever tried to grow a citrus producing tree? Uh? No,
Speaker 1: I want a lime tree or a lemon tree, but
Speaker 1: we don't currently have one. Okay, So one of the
Speaker 1: worst things that's going to happen to you when you
Speaker 1: start growing that lime tree are a FIDS. And you're
Speaker 1: gonna know you have a FIDS, not because you see
Speaker 1: a bunch of aphids on there, but because all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, there's like sticky stuff running all over your leads,
Speaker 1: all over your branches, all over the try of your
Speaker 1: little lime tree that you're trying to grow and never
Speaker 1: did anything to anybody, but now all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it's really suffering. And what you will know is that
Speaker 1: that you have an a FIT infestation. One of the
Speaker 1: other day giveaways Chuck, that you have an a FIT
Speaker 1: infestation on your future hypothetical lime tree is that it
Speaker 1: will be covered with ants. And those ants are not
Speaker 1: just they're eating that sticky stuff, they're actually what's what's
Speaker 1: some atomologists referred to as um raising these aphids as
Speaker 1: basically livestock. Yeah, so the honeydew, and I might I
Speaker 1: hope I'm not getting this wrong. It sounds like what
Speaker 1: they do is is the apid pierces the flow m
Speaker 1: ducks and then this stuff goes straight through them, this
Speaker 1: sap and goes in their mouth, comes out their butt
Speaker 1: as honey dew. And that's what those ants are. That's
Speaker 1: their delicious nectar, right. Yes, I don't understand why the
Speaker 1: ants can't just go to where the aphids just were
Speaker 1: and the honeydew that's coming out of there. So it
Speaker 1: must have something to do with with the aphid, like
Speaker 1: it's transformed by the aphid physiology. I guess it's a
Speaker 1: transformative experience, like like the ants. Like, yes, I see
Speaker 1: the raw ingredient there is coming out of the tree,
Speaker 1: but I can only I'm all about the stuff that's
Speaker 1: coming out of this a fid little bottom. That's what
Speaker 1: I want to lap up. I guess you know you want,
Speaker 1: you want that soft serve right out of the machine.
Speaker 1: I guess. So they are crazy for this stuff so
Speaker 1: much so that again that they they do so they
Speaker 1: will herd a fids two different parts of the plant
Speaker 1: um to say, okay, here, bite into this, and I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna position my mouth right right behind you while
Speaker 1: you do. Just let it flow right in my face. Um.
Speaker 1: They will move them around the plant like herds at
Speaker 1: at night or when it gets cold. They will actually
Speaker 1: like herd the aphids into their own little nests and
Speaker 1: protect them and defend them. Ladybug Love to eat a FIDS,
Speaker 1: So ants defend uh aphids against ladybugs. Um. They and
Speaker 1: then if they want an a FID to produce honeydew,
Speaker 1: they will actually like stroke the a fit to be
Speaker 1: like go ahead, let go, and then they eat the
Speaker 1: honeydew that comes out of the a fit. But they
Speaker 1: The fact is this, to me is one of fifty
Speaker 1: facts of the podcast. They heard and treat and raise
Speaker 1: and protect a fids just like humans do livestock like
Speaker 1: cattle and pigs and things that we depend on for
Speaker 1: for food. Yeah, those little, supposedly brainless little insects all
Speaker 1: in the name of that sweet sweet butt juice. That's right, honeydew.
Speaker 1: That is unbelievable. Yeah, I think that might top off
Speaker 1: at least this episode's fact of the podcast. That's better
Speaker 1: than rafts. If you ask me, I think you might
Speaker 1: be right, dude. So, not only do they like honeydew
Speaker 1: chuck um because answer omnivorous. I'm not sure if I
Speaker 1: said that yet. Um, they will eat all sorts of
Speaker 1: other stuff too, um, nectar, other insects. Um. They're apparently
Speaker 1: one of the largest predators of um invertebrates wherever they live.
Speaker 1: Now will they eat each other. Yeah, they'll actually cannibalize
Speaker 1: eggs to to um for so their line will will
Speaker 1: um will succeed over like a nestmates line in some cases.
Speaker 1: I also saw this thing and maybe this is a
Speaker 1: decent fact to sort of finish on that. Some ants
Speaker 1: are called slave makers and they practice slave rating. So
Speaker 1: if you're a slave maker, aunt you are specialized to
Speaker 1: another kind of species. It's really close to your own,
Speaker 1: and you basically capture them and force them to work
Speaker 1: in your colony. What is going on? And they do it.
Speaker 1: They they just go over there and they work in
Speaker 1: their colony like it was their own, and all the
Speaker 1: slave maker all they do is go and replenish that
Speaker 1: labor force with more enslaved ants. That is crazy. You
Speaker 1: have to just stop researching at a certain point. I did.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying, aunt radiwise, it's eighteen hours long,
Speaker 1: aunt Ran is coming in chuck from us. Is that
Speaker 1: is that good for part one? I think so it
Speaker 1: was a great one to finish on. Nice work. And
Speaker 1: then as as this custom, we don't typically do a
Speaker 1: listener mail for part one of a part two, right,
Speaker 1: and we'll see you guys Thursday, I Guess for part
Speaker 1: two of ants. If I'm not mistaken, and if you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with us, you can send
Speaker 1: us an email send it off to stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeart 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. Four