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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Joe McCormick, and today we are bringing you

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Speaker 1: an episode from the Vault, an older episode of the show.

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Speaker 1: This one is called do Ants Make Traps? It is

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Speaker 1: about exactly that question, whether ants the insect build traps.

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Speaker 1: This originally published January twentieth, twenty twenty two. Hope you enjoy.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 3: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 3: is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 1: And I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going to be

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Speaker 1: talking about traps. I think I've mentioned this in some

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Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema episodes, but for some reason, ever since

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Speaker 1: I was a little kid, I have always loved movie

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Speaker 1: scenes where the protagonists build a trap to use against

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Speaker 1: the villain or the monster. I remember, like Home Alone

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Speaker 1: when I was a little kid, that whole sequence was great.

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Speaker 1: It sort of expands to fill my whole childhood impression

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Speaker 1: of what the movie was. And if you go back

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Speaker 1: and watch it as an adult, it's kind of weird

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Speaker 1: that it's only like fifteen or twenty minutes of the runtime.

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Speaker 3: In Home Alone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does seem like

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Speaker 3: that's the main thing I remember. Yeah, they the traps,

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Speaker 3: the traps, and certainly people feel certain nostalgia for them.

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Speaker 1: My heart swells at the thought of a nail going

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Speaker 1: into Daniel Stearn's foot. But also, yeah, I remember other ones,

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Speaker 1: like you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger builds a bunch of traps

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Speaker 1: and predator. But like, this wasn't just when I was

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Speaker 1: a kid. It still works on me. I remember there

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Speaker 1: was a sequence I just loved in the more recent

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Speaker 1: horror movie It follows where the characters build a trap

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Speaker 1: for the last year.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, that is very They have a very

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Speaker 3: much a kind of home alones setup that they do there.

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Speaker 3: Of course, it's not only the heroes that have traps.

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Speaker 3: I always love a good villain trap as well, especially

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Speaker 3: the trap door. And the trap door sequence is always

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Speaker 3: a lot of fun, you know. Be it something like

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Speaker 3: in Lynn Labyrinth. I love the trap when the trap

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Speaker 3: door springs on our hero and that. But actually Tomorrow's

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Speaker 3: Weird House Cinema also has a fun trap door sequence.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so look forward to that. Well.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, on side of the protagonists getting through traps set

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Speaker 1: for them, another one of my favorite movie sequences as

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Speaker 1: a child was the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Art.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and when INDI's going through all the traps,

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Speaker 1: something about it is just like, deep in the brain,

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Speaker 1: it's very satisfying.

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Speaker 3: Wall to wall traps. Yeah, that's that's a great sequence

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Speaker 3: as well. And all of these are great sequences in

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Speaker 3: spite of the fact that when you when you can,

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Speaker 3: when you really think long and hard about any of

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Speaker 3: these scenarios, you know, the cracks definitely show would all

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Speaker 3: of these traps still be working in this ancient ruin

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Speaker 3: that Indiana Jones finds himself in. I don't know, it's

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Speaker 3: a hard argument to make there, right.

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Speaker 1: How did the spring trap operate by you sticking your

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Speaker 1: hand through a shaft of light when it was made

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Speaker 1: like thousands of years ago?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Or you know, if it's duke and predator, like,

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Speaker 3: how does he how does he make this super powerful

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Speaker 3: compound bow just in the space of a few hours

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Speaker 3: on an afternoon in the jungle.

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Speaker 1: That's just standard survival training.

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Speaker 3: I mean, and all these other various e Wok traps

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Speaker 3: that he builds didn't didn't you go to that camp?

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Speaker 3: Did I build a bow like that at a cat camp. No,

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Speaker 3: I think we sharpened sticks, you know, that would be

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Speaker 3: that would be more believable. Right, he makes a spear, Yeah,

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Speaker 3: to battle.

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Speaker 1: That's most of the way there.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, But you know, I think it probably speaks volumes

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Speaker 3: for humans to be you know, to be said all

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Speaker 3: of this about traps, and especially about you know, loving

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Speaker 3: these cinematic treatments of traps, because because what are traps? Ultimately,

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Speaker 3: very broadly speaking, they're clever, tactical and or technological innovations

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Speaker 3: that level the playing field against predators, against prey, and

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Speaker 3: even against fellow humans. Traps are the sort of things

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Speaker 3: that humans have been up to since prehistory. So of

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Speaker 3: course we love traps, and of course we admire things

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Speaker 3: like traps that we find in other species.

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Speaker 1: Right, So today we're going to be focusing on some

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Speaker 1: allegations of insects with the ability to build traps, specifically

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Speaker 1: ants that do things that may in fact be biological

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Speaker 1: evolutions that allow them to trap prey. Now, there are

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Speaker 1: some other animals that I think we could say more

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Speaker 1: more clearly and famously create traps. I think the obvious

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Speaker 1: example here would be spiders.

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Speaker 3: Yes, yes, spiders are the trap builders par excellence. You know,

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Speaker 3: there are no finer trap builders in the animal Maybe

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Speaker 3: you could make a case for human beings, but personally

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Speaker 3: I'm not in favor of that. I think web building

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Speaker 3: spiders especially are just such highly evolved trap masters. Every

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Speaker 3: detail of their anatomy and behavior enhances their trapping ability,

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Speaker 3: and the trap is very much an extension of their

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Speaker 3: own bodies in so many ways. And we've covered this,

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Speaker 3: and we've covered spiders in general numerous times in the

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Speaker 3: show before, and we'll likely keep coming back to them.

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Speaker 3: But yeah, the spider, the spider is the trap maker.

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Speaker 3: There's nothing else that the spider really does. Anything else

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Speaker 3: it does the web building spider is going to do

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Speaker 3: in close proximity to the web that it has built.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Another example that's come up before, I think in

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Speaker 1: our Sarlac episodes was the ant lion.

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Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah, this is a case where we have predatory

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Speaker 3: larvae that in some species of antlon anyway, set up

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Speaker 3: at the bottom of sand pits that they dig, ready

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Speaker 3: to lack shout at anything that disturbs their grains and

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Speaker 3: you know, ventures down into the trap. Again, not all

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Speaker 3: ant lion species dig trap pits, but some of the

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Speaker 3: most famous ones.

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Speaker 1: Do I remember. One of the great things we learned

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Speaker 1: about the ant lion was that, like you say, it

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Speaker 1: is the ones that make traps. It is just the

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Speaker 1: larval period of their lifespan, their life cycle that they

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Speaker 1: make the traps. Then they later metamorphosed into another form.

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Speaker 1: But while they're in that larval stage, I think at

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Speaker 1: least some of them never poop. So yeah, yeah, catching

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Speaker 1: ants and eating them and just like waiting, and it's

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Speaker 1: like if you had to wait until you turned eighteen

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Speaker 1: to poop.

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Speaker 3: We'll go back and listen to that Sarlac episode if

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Speaker 3: you'd like to hear more about the ant lion. There's

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Speaker 3: also the species of creature known as the worm lion,

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Speaker 3: and this is unrelated to the ant lion. It's just

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Speaker 3: a matter of convergent evolution that he ends up utilizing

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Speaker 3: largely the exact same method again when it's a larva,

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Speaker 3: though the pit itself in this case is generated via

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Speaker 3: a slightly different method, so it digs its pit in

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Speaker 3: a slightly different method, but it still consumes its prey

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Speaker 3: in the same manner.

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Speaker 1: But for me, at least, if you ask me to

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Speaker 1: make a list of non human animals, that make traps.

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Speaker 1: I could obviously go spiders. I would have thought of

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Speaker 1: the ant lion, maybe by association the worm lion. But

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Speaker 1: there before I was reading up for this episode, I

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Speaker 1: think I would have drawn a blank. I wouldn't know

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Speaker 1: what to go to next.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and part of it comes down to just how

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Speaker 3: are you going to going to define a trap? For example,

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Speaker 3: Here's here's an interesting potential example we can discuss that

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Speaker 3: I read across read about when I was reading Gilbert

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Speaker 3: Waldbauer's How Not to Be Eaten, which is largely about insects,

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Speaker 3: but there's a part where the author is discussing the

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Speaker 3: burrowing owl. So these are small birds native to the

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Speaker 3: Great Plains in southern Florida. I think they're about the

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Speaker 3: size of a robin. I'm to understand that, you know,

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Speaker 3: the small, little little guys. But they make their home

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Speaker 3: in burrows that they did themselves. And one of the

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Speaker 3: interesting things that they do in addition to this, if

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Speaker 3: this wasn't you know interesting enough already, is the burrowing

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Speaker 3: owl will scatter horse or cow dung around the entrance

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Speaker 3: to their burrows. And then, you know, times before European contact,

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Speaker 3: this would have probably been bison dung, and the dung

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Speaker 3: does seem to be important because if researchers remove the

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Speaker 3: dung from the vicinity, the birds will just the bird

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Speaker 3: will just go out and obtain more dung and place

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Speaker 3: it in the vicinity. So it seems to be doing

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Speaker 3: this intentionally. The theory is that they place the dung

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Speaker 3: to bait dung beetles. So they put the dung out,

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Speaker 3: dung beetles come, And indeed researchers have been able to

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Speaker 3: tell that the owls eat ten times more dung beetles

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Speaker 3: than usual when the dung is out.

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Speaker 1: Ah. Well, this will in fact mirror one of the

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Speaker 1: two examples of potential ant trap making that I want

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Speaker 1: to talk about later.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's but this is a great example.

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Speaker 3: It's certainly clever. I like it. But it kind of

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Speaker 3: forces us to ask the question of a trap, like

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Speaker 3: what is a trap? Is it merely baiting a trap?

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Speaker 1: That is a good question, yeah, because and how much

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Speaker 1: does the trap structure have to be separate from your

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Speaker 1: body in order to recount as a constructed trap? And

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Speaker 1: how much does it have to how much work does

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Speaker 1: it have to do for you?

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Speaker 3: Yeah? And at what point does an animal's behavior stop

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Speaker 3: being a trap and just become sneaky behavior, sneaky tactics,

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Speaker 3: or simply ambush predation, because obviously there are plenty of

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Speaker 3: examples of ambush predators on land and in the sea,

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Speaker 3: and these include everything from well, the trap door spider

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Speaker 3: for one, which I think is definitely a case of

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Speaker 3: building because it's an ambush predator, but it builds a

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Speaker 3: silk hinge trap door to aid in those ambushes.

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Speaker 1: Right, so the trapdoor hides it. I think you could

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Speaker 1: count that as like infrastructure necessary to constitute a trap.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that, Yeah, definitely with the trapdoor spider.

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Speaker 3: But then you also have just various camouflage predators, including

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Speaker 3: things like frogfish, praying mantis's, chameleons, and more, which are

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Speaker 3: not building anything. They're not altering their environment, but they've

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Speaker 3: evolved to look like a part of their environment and

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Speaker 3: they have the you know, often tremendous abilities of camouflage

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Speaker 3: that enable them to quickly ambush something that they want

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Speaker 3: to eat.

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Speaker 1: Okay, that probably doesn't That doesn't really seem like a

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Speaker 1: trap to me, because they're just evolved to look that way,

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Speaker 1: and they they do the actual hunting themselves.

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Speaker 3: Right, And then of course you have various birds and

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Speaker 3: cats and big cats even that are just very stealthy,

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Speaker 3: that are just very good at not being observed by

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Speaker 3: the things they want to kill. So I was reading

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Speaker 3: a little bit about this in Douglas j Imlin's excellent

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Speaker 3: book Animal Weapons that have referenced on the Show before,

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Speaker 3: and he points out that creatures such as this generally

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Speaker 3: depend on quote, a quick strike weapon that immediately incapacitates

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Speaker 3: its victim. And of course these bioweapons might be enhanced

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Speaker 3: by special features, such as in various deep sea ambush

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Speaker 3: predators a bioluminescent lure, which again is not something they

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Speaker 3: have created or engineered out of their environment, but it

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Speaker 3: is a part of their body. So when we come

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Speaker 3: back to this idea that what it needs to be

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Speaker 3: something that's built, it needs to be something that's engineered,

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Speaker 3: or just a hole dug in the ground, even we

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Speaker 3: come back to that same question, well, why don't we

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Speaker 3: find more of this? And I actually found an interesting

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Speaker 3: paper title out there, Why are pitfall Traps So Rare

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Speaker 3: in the Natural World? By G. D Ruxton and MH. Hansel,

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Speaker 3: And it appeared in evolutionary ecology in two thousand and nine.

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Speaker 1: Interesting question.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So the authors here point out that in order

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Speaker 3: to lay a trap, you generally need either advanced cognitive

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Speaker 3: powers as with humans obviously, or you need specialist self

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Speaker 3: secreted materials as with spiders and cattisfly larvae, thing which

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Speaker 3: the catasi fly larvae use that their their secretions to

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Speaker 3: create a net like even meshed trap like a silk trap,

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Speaker 3: in order to filter catch their prey.

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Speaker 1: That makes sense. So humans can create all kinds of

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Speaker 1: traps because we have, you know, cognitive powers that allow

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Speaker 1: us to imagine what could be done. How you know,

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Speaker 1: other materials in the environment could be repurposed to passively

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Speaker 1: ensnare or kill prey animals and spiders and stuff. That's

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Speaker 1: just the trap you could almost say, is a part

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Speaker 1: of their body. Even though the web is a built thing.

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Speaker 1: They revolved to secrete the silk for the web out

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Speaker 1: of their bodies, and they have very instinctually driven behaviors

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Speaker 1: for how they extrude that silk wear in what patterns.

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Speaker 3: Right, So, Ruxton and Hansel here ultimately point out that okay,

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Speaker 3: we have the ant lion though, and of course the

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Speaker 3: worm lion. These are exceptions to the rule. They make

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Speaker 3: use of a pitfall trap, and so the authors ask

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Speaker 3: why is this basic tactic not more common in the

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Speaker 3: animal world? How hard is it, after all to dig

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Speaker 3: a hole? They're easy, they're cheap, and yet you don't

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Speaker 3: see this technique used by virtually anything outside of some

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Speaker 3: ant lions and worm lions. Apparently, the lack of more

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Speaker 3: pitfall traps than nature was something of a mystery and

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Speaker 3: remain something of a mystery.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that is interesting, Okay, so it took me a

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Speaker 1: second to get the distinction they're making. But they're saying

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Speaker 1: that the ant lion and the wormline would be kind

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Speaker 1: of an outlier because they don't have complex intelligence and

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Speaker 1: imagination like humans, so they're not inventing traps with cognitive powers.

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Speaker 1: But they also don't secrete a material that CONTs institutes

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Speaker 1: the basis of the trap like a spider. They're literally

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Speaker 1: just building a trap out of the dead environment around

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Speaker 1: of them by digging a conically shaped hole in such

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Speaker 1: a pattern that ants get stuck in it when they

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Speaker 1: fall down the side. And why is that so rare,

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Speaker 1: because it would seem like that that should be a

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Speaker 1: strategy that lots of animals could easily employ.

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Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, again, holes are ultimately easy to make, low energy.

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Speaker 3: Why not? Why why? Why why is this cat not

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Speaker 3: making a hole and using that as part of its

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Speaker 3: hunting tactics?

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Speaker 1: So what are their thoughts on this, like, why would

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Speaker 1: why wouldn't we see this more often?

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Speaker 3: Well, they proposed two speculative reasons for the lack of

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Speaker 3: pitfall traps in nature. The first one is pitfall traps

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Speaker 3: may require a specialist micro habitat. In other words, you

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Speaker 3: can't do this just anywhere. Conditions have to be just right,

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Speaker 3: such as you know, we can look at to the

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Speaker 3: ant lions, they have to be kind of sandy conditions.

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Speaker 3: You know, you have to have that kind of granular environment.

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Speaker 3: So it's the kind of tactic that a potential trap

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Speaker 3: builder would not necessarily be able to employ all over

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Speaker 3: the place. You would have to depend on again, on

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Speaker 3: a specialist micro habitat.

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Speaker 1: I think I recall from our Sarlac episode where we

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Speaker 1: had a segment about the ant lion that they needed

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Speaker 1: the grains of soil to be of a particular size,

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Speaker 1: like the sandy grains above or below a certain diameter

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Speaker 1: threshold would not work very well for making the traps.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Now the second point is that with the

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Speaker 3: ant lion in particular, the trap target's small prey, and

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Speaker 3: since they may be more functionally tied to their trap

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Speaker 3: than spiders are, traps of this nature could serve as

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Speaker 3: like basically a major bull's eye for potential predators. And

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Speaker 3: indeed the main predators of ant lions and worm lions

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Speaker 3: are birds who know what to look for.

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Speaker 1: That's a really good point. So by building a trap

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Speaker 1: and then sitting in it and waiting for your prey

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Speaker 1: to fall in, you were also usually going to be

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Speaker 1: making a structure that makes it easy for things that

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Speaker 1: want to eat you to define where you are. You know,

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Speaker 1: they don't have to look too hard because you've made

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Speaker 1: a big hole in the ground.

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Speaker 3: Right and and spiders just have a little more leeway

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Speaker 3: with the situation. Now, I should point out Hansel also

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Speaker 3: wrote an entire book which I'm going to reference here

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Speaker 3: in a minute. He spends a lot of time in

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Speaker 3: that book talking about spiders and how, you know, sometimes

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Speaker 3: spider webs are very visible and other times they are not,

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Speaker 3: and how that plays into the you know, the ultimate

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Speaker 3: kind of complex relationship between spiders and the creatures that

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Speaker 3: would eat spiders. But just thinking about this as the

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Speaker 3: trap being this conspicuous thing. This we actually see this

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Speaker 3: in a lot of our fantastic trap fiction. You know

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Speaker 3: that moment when the target of the clever cinematic trap,

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Speaker 3: especially if it's laid by the protagonists, the enemy almost

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Speaker 3: sets it off, right, like the predator almost triggers the

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Speaker 3: trip line you've prepared. But then something happens, right the

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Speaker 3: monster deduces that the trap is there, or it suspects

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Speaker 3: that something is off.

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Speaker 1: Oh, and maybe even the presence of a trap is

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Speaker 1: how the hero knows that they have stumbled across the

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Speaker 1: bad guy's hideout.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. It even reminds me a bit of our

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Speaker 3: recent weird house selection, The Lift. This was the Killer

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Speaker 3: Elevator movie, the Killer Elevator in this or I guess

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Speaker 3: you were more specifically the weird biobrain that's been installed

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Speaker 3: in the elevator shaft to power these elevators. It's kind

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Speaker 3: of an obligate trap predator, but it's so tied to

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Speaker 3: that environment that it's a little tricky, like it's not

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Speaker 3: able to pull off every kill, and it's eventually destroyed

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Speaker 3: by prey that is too clever for it.

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Speaker 1: Brilliant analogy. This is true. The killer elevator is an

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Speaker 1: obligate trap predator.

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Speaker 3: I also have to point out, speaking of the Sarlac,

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Speaker 3: is that recent Mandalorian episodes have also sort of played

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Speaker 3: with this idea. Yeah, yeah, the Mighty Sarlac. The Startlack's

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Speaker 3: pretty impressive, but they make it clear that even these

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Speaker 3: great trap predators can be a soom by the mighty

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Speaker 3: create dragon that lives in the deserts of Tatooine. So

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Speaker 3: knowing you're there being you know, this identifiable organism in

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Speaker 3: the sand, that can have a huge downside to it.

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Speaker 1: Now, I was trying to think of counterpoints to the

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Speaker 1: idea that. Okay, so sitting at the bottom of a

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Speaker 1: pitfall trap and waiting for prey to fall into you

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Speaker 1: and then eating that that makes you vulnerable to predators

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Speaker 1: that want to find you. Well, well, what if you

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Speaker 1: just make pitfall traps and then you go away and

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Speaker 1: then you know, leave them there and then come back

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Speaker 1: like a human hunter might do, you know, leave a

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Speaker 1: trap out in the woods and then come and see

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Speaker 1: what it collected lobster traps or something. But I can

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Speaker 1: see downsides to that as well, because if it's just

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Speaker 1: a pit trap, you could imagine that, well, something might

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Speaker 1: fall in there, but then something else might eat it

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Speaker 1: before you get to it, right, so, or it might

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Speaker 1: you know, if you have to make these all over

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Speaker 1: the place, you might spend a lot of energy going

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Speaker 1: around from one to the other. So is that really

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Speaker 1: all that much better than just hunting?

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Speaker 3: Well, and then it kind of comes back to this

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Speaker 3: idea that the trap laid by an animal especially still

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Speaker 3: requires the lethal mechanism, and in the case of the antlime,

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Speaker 3: the legal lethal mechanism is itself. It is still essentially

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Speaker 3: an ambush predator like again, like Emmilin says, quote a

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Speaker 3: quick strike weapon that immediately incapacitates its victim.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't believe I didn't think of that. That's,

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Speaker 1: of course a good point. You have to find a

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Speaker 1: way to kill the prey, right.

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Speaker 3: So I mentioned that that Henzel has a whole book

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Speaker 3: that deals with with some of this a little bit,

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Speaker 3: but just sort of the broader picture of animals building things.

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Speaker 3: It's titled Animal Architecture, and I was reading through this

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Speaker 3: a bit. He contends that we're not looking at traps

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Speaker 3: when we're looking at cases of an animal baiting another animal,

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Speaker 3: because traps are a kind of subset of animal architecture,

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Speaker 3: an engineered space that aids in capture.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so by his metric here, what the burrowing owl

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Speaker 1: does by leaving dung out around its nest and having

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Speaker 1: this attract insects to it, that would not count as

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Speaker 1: a trap because it is not a structure that in

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Speaker 1: any way aids and capture. It just attracts prey to

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Speaker 1: a site.

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Speaker 3: Oh, by the way, I want to also, speaking of

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Speaker 3: the burrowing owl again, I want to throw in that

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Speaker 3: while some burrowing owls do build their own burrows, they're

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Speaker 3: also burrowing owls that acquire the burrows of other creatures. Anyway,

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Speaker 3: I want to read this quote from Hansel here. I

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Speaker 3: think he puts it rather well concerning the animal architecture

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Speaker 3: and traps quote. Whereas a house can just be a

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Speaker 3: barrier between the builder and the outside world, a trap

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Speaker 3: has a dynamic relationship between itself and the prey. The

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Speaker 3: prey needs to approach the trap in a particular orientation

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Speaker 3: to it, and then needs to be restrained by it.

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Speaker 3: Traps are therefore more complex than homes and need to

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Speaker 3: be more precisely engineered, and then he goes on to

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Speaker 3: point out the quote among the vertebrates, trap builders were

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Speaker 3: apparently absent until the recent history of man. Now he

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Speaker 3: cites human mental capacity once more for the construction of

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Speaker 3: such traps, noting quote, Virtually all non human trap builders

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Speaker 3: use self secreted materials, and the capture principle they adopt

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Speaker 3: is the net. Exceptions are simple in design and operation,

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Speaker 3: as well as rare, and then he goes on to

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Speaker 3: specifically mention antlions, worm lions, and larval diptra.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, a large takeaway here is that trap building

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Speaker 1: is not as widespread in the animal kingdom as you

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Speaker 1: might expect. Humans make a lot of traps. There are

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Speaker 1: some very specialized animals, especially some invertebrates, that use traps

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Speaker 1: made of materials that they secrete from their own bodies,

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Speaker 1: but generally, trap building is not a very widespread hunting

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Speaker 1: strategy among animals of planet Earth, in which case it

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Speaker 1: would be very interesting to find examples of animals such

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Speaker 1: as ants, that make traps in order to get their nutrition.

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Speaker 1: And I guess that's a good segue to what I

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Speaker 1: to the main focus of today's episode. Which was a

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Speaker 1: couple of examples I came across of ants that do

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Speaker 1: something that could be interpreted as building traps as a

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Speaker 1: hunting strategy.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean it would make sense that we

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Speaker 3: might find something like this in the ant world because

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Speaker 3: ants are masters of construction, they alter their environment, they're

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Speaker 3: capable of practicing agriculture. They as we've discussed in previous

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Speaker 3: episodes of the show, they engage in complex conflicts that

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Speaker 3: we might well compare to warfare. They can solve problems there.

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Speaker 3: I mean, the list goes on and on. Ants are

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Speaker 3: amazing as of course, as the now Light e O.

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Speaker 3: Wilson was fond of reminding us, you know, ants, there

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Speaker 3: are incredible creatures that we've covered them numerous times in

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Speaker 3: the show before, we're covering today, and I'm sure we'll

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Speaker 3: cover them again exactly.

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Speaker 1: So the first example I want to talk about I

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Speaker 1: found so interesting, and this one also has some interesting

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Speaker 1: differences in interpretations I came across. But just to start

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Speaker 1: with the basic report. I was reading about this in

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Speaker 1: a paper published in Nature in the year two thousand

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Speaker 1: and five by land Jan Pascal, Jean Solano, Julian Irole,

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Speaker 1: Bruno Corbara and Jerome Oreville called arboreal ants build traps

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Speaker 1: to capture prey, and also as a supplement to the

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Speaker 1: paper in Nature, I was reading a summary feature that

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Speaker 1: was also in Nature by NoREL Tawi, published in April

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Speaker 1: two thousand and five, called Amazonian ants ambush prey. So

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Speaker 1: here's the deal. There's a plant in the Amazon called

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Speaker 1: Hertella phisofera, or maybe Phisophora physo phora. I'm going to

435
00:23:59,200 --> 00:24:03,280
Speaker 1: try to say fizzof so these here Tella plants. Plants

436
00:24:03,320 --> 00:24:07,440
Speaker 1: in this genus are woody trees or shrubs. I've seen

437
00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:10,159
Speaker 1: them called both trees and shrubs, but they're if you're

438
00:24:10,200 --> 00:24:12,159
Speaker 1: trying to picture them as a tree, you should be

439
00:24:12,200 --> 00:24:15,199
Speaker 1: imagining a small tree, so woody stems, but not like

440
00:24:15,280 --> 00:24:18,840
Speaker 1: you know, sky high. Plants in this genus are found

441
00:24:18,840 --> 00:24:22,159
Speaker 1: in the tropics across multiple continents, but their diversity is

442
00:24:22,200 --> 00:24:26,199
Speaker 1: concentrated around the Amazon, and they typically have flowers that

443
00:24:26,240 --> 00:24:30,639
Speaker 1: are pollinated by butterflies. And this one species in particular,

444
00:24:30,720 --> 00:24:34,159
Speaker 1: here Tella physophera, is what the authors of the paper

445
00:24:34,240 --> 00:24:38,439
Speaker 1: call an ant plant. This is a plant species that

446
00:24:38,600 --> 00:24:43,000
Speaker 1: is known to have a specific biological relationship with a

447
00:24:43,080 --> 00:24:47,359
Speaker 1: species of ant and these can be found throughout the world.

448
00:24:47,600 --> 00:24:51,840
Speaker 1: There are very common mutualisms, or you know, various kinds

449
00:24:51,880 --> 00:24:55,760
Speaker 1: of symbiotic relationships between ant colonies and the trees or

450
00:24:55,800 --> 00:24:59,679
Speaker 1: plants they inhabit. Now, this plant in particular has a

451
00:24:59,680 --> 00:25:05,480
Speaker 1: relationtionship with the arboreal ant alomeras decim articulatus, and they

452
00:25:05,600 --> 00:25:09,639
Speaker 1: live on the body of the plant, forming colony centers

453
00:25:09,680 --> 00:25:12,760
Speaker 1: in what the authors of the paper call leaf pouches.

454
00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:16,679
Speaker 1: They are these little bulb looking things that can usually

455
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:20,120
Speaker 1: be found at the places where the branches split into leaves.

456
00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:22,800
Speaker 1: They look like these it's kind of hard to describe them.

457
00:25:22,840 --> 00:25:25,960
Speaker 1: They're just these little like green lobes or orbs, and

458
00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:29,280
Speaker 1: apparently the ants like to get inside those and make

459
00:25:29,359 --> 00:25:30,120
Speaker 1: nests in there.

460
00:25:31,240 --> 00:25:33,680
Speaker 3: Now. Already, one of the things that's that I'm reminded

461
00:25:33,720 --> 00:25:36,480
Speaker 3: of is the idea of like a specialist micro habitat.

462
00:25:36,880 --> 00:25:39,240
Speaker 3: And if you have a situation where a plant is

463
00:25:40,080 --> 00:25:43,760
Speaker 3: the home to the ants, that they have this ant

464
00:25:43,800 --> 00:25:47,640
Speaker 3: plant relationship in place, you know that the plant itself

465
00:25:47,680 --> 00:25:49,520
Speaker 3: is kind of the environment, it's kind of the micro

466
00:25:49,600 --> 00:25:52,680
Speaker 3: habitat that the ant is the master off.

467
00:25:53,080 --> 00:25:55,359
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. But the interesting thing is of course,

468
00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:58,760
Speaker 1: ants being builders, some ants will form complex, you know,

469
00:25:59,040 --> 00:26:03,320
Speaker 1: dugout colonies in the ground or other types of interesting

470
00:26:03,359 --> 00:26:07,600
Speaker 1: engineered environments. They can also engineer the microhabitat of the

471
00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:10,919
Speaker 1: surface of a plant, and that's what we're going to

472
00:26:10,920 --> 00:26:13,800
Speaker 1: be talking about in this case. Oh and I should

473
00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:16,040
Speaker 1: say that the colonies that were looked at in this

474
00:26:16,080 --> 00:26:19,800
Speaker 1: two thousand and five paper were from French Guyana in

475
00:26:19,880 --> 00:26:24,679
Speaker 1: northern South America. But so what you find in these

476
00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:29,840
Speaker 1: plants that are occupied by their familiar ant species is

477
00:26:29,840 --> 00:26:33,760
Speaker 1: that along the stems of the host plant, the ants

478
00:26:33,800 --> 00:26:38,400
Speaker 1: will build what the authors of this paper call galleried structures,

479
00:26:38,520 --> 00:26:41,560
Speaker 1: or sometimes they just say galleries. It's kind of hard

480
00:26:41,560 --> 00:26:45,160
Speaker 1: to describe exactly what this is, but imagine a kind

481
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:50,480
Speaker 1: of platform built out over the surface of the stem

482
00:26:50,680 --> 00:26:53,479
Speaker 1: of the plant, and it's a platform that the ants

483
00:26:53,520 --> 00:26:57,560
Speaker 1: can crawl underneath. And then this platform has a kind

484
00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:01,760
Speaker 1: of spongy texture, almost as if fits or honeycomb texture.

485
00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:05,960
Speaker 1: It's aligned with all these holes in the platform that

486
00:27:06,040 --> 00:27:09,480
Speaker 1: the ants can crawl in and out through. Generally the

487
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:12,880
Speaker 1: holes are just slightly larger than the diameter of one

488
00:27:12,880 --> 00:27:16,879
Speaker 1: of the worker ants heads. So through these platforms raised

489
00:27:16,920 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 1: above the stem of the plant. Ants crawl underneath them,

490
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:22,800
Speaker 1: but then crawl up and up and down, in and

491
00:27:22,840 --> 00:27:25,120
Speaker 1: out through the holes in the platform.

492
00:27:25,359 --> 00:27:28,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is kind of difficult to describe it because

493
00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:30,920
Speaker 3: it is so different from something that that humans would

494
00:27:30,960 --> 00:27:34,800
Speaker 3: for the most part build, you know, by virtue of

495
00:27:34,880 --> 00:27:38,960
Speaker 3: the ants being far more mobile and sort of living

496
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:41,960
Speaker 3: in a more three dimensional space than human beings tend to.

497
00:27:42,320 --> 00:27:44,600
Speaker 1: By the way, these are great to look up, probably

498
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:47,560
Speaker 1: unless you suffer from trip to phobia, in which case

499
00:27:47,720 --> 00:27:48,520
Speaker 1: stay far away.

500
00:27:48,680 --> 00:27:50,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you're if you're freaked out by things like

501
00:27:50,880 --> 00:27:55,080
Speaker 3: lotus pods and random holes and things, yeah, you might.

502
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:58,119
Speaker 3: You might want to avoid this particular Google image search.

503
00:27:58,480 --> 00:28:01,000
Speaker 1: Now, how do the ants build these galleries, Well, they

504
00:28:01,040 --> 00:28:05,720
Speaker 1: apparently make them by cutting off tricombs from the stems

505
00:28:05,760 --> 00:28:08,640
Speaker 1: of the plant. Tricombs is a word that comes from

506
00:28:08,680 --> 00:28:12,480
Speaker 1: the Greek word for hares. These are small, little fibery

507
00:28:12,520 --> 00:28:15,359
Speaker 1: appendages that poke out from the surface of a plant.

508
00:28:15,600 --> 00:28:17,879
Speaker 1: You've probably seen lots of plants before that have little

509
00:28:17,920 --> 00:28:20,960
Speaker 1: hairy things all over the stem or the leaves. Those

510
00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:23,600
Speaker 1: are tricombs, and they do look a lot like hares.

511
00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:27,480
Speaker 1: So the worker ants will move along the stem of

512
00:28:28,560 --> 00:28:33,680
Speaker 1: a Hairtella physophera plant, clearing away the tricombs, and then,

513
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:36,560
Speaker 1: just to read from the language used in the paper here,

514
00:28:36,720 --> 00:28:41,360
Speaker 1: quote then using uncut tricombes as pillars, they build the

515
00:28:41,400 --> 00:28:46,440
Speaker 1: galley's vault by binding cut tricombs together with a compound

516
00:28:46,680 --> 00:28:51,440
Speaker 1: that they regurgitate later. This structure is reinforced by the

517
00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:55,959
Speaker 1: mycelium of a complex of sooty mold species that has

518
00:28:56,000 --> 00:29:00,240
Speaker 1: been manipulated by the ants. Fungal growth starts around the

519
00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:03,720
Speaker 1: holes and then spreads rapidly to the rest of the structure.

520
00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:07,720
Speaker 1: So I think you heard that right. So these ants

521
00:29:07,840 --> 00:29:11,720
Speaker 1: build their galleries along the stem of the plant by

522
00:29:11,840 --> 00:29:14,320
Speaker 1: cutting the hairs off of the plant where they live,

523
00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:18,800
Speaker 1: then using those hairs as building materials, along with their

524
00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:22,320
Speaker 1: own barf as a kind of mortar, and then holding

525
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:26,920
Speaker 1: everything together by seating it with mold or fungus that

526
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:31,480
Speaker 1: they farm. So they have a kind of agricultural project

527
00:29:31,560 --> 00:29:35,959
Speaker 1: for farming fungal rebar that they use to reinforce the

528
00:29:35,960 --> 00:29:39,440
Speaker 1: galleries that they build. And in quotes given to the press,

529
00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:42,760
Speaker 1: I've seen the authors of this study compare this composite

530
00:29:42,800 --> 00:29:44,560
Speaker 1: material to fiberglass.

531
00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:48,320
Speaker 3: Wow, Yeah, that does seem like a good comparison. Oh man,

532
00:29:48,440 --> 00:29:50,360
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just so amazing that it's not just

533
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:54,920
Speaker 3: like this physical act, but they're actually yeah, seating it

534
00:29:55,000 --> 00:29:59,719
Speaker 3: with with this this mold. Oh man, they're kind they're

535
00:29:59,760 --> 00:30:03,120
Speaker 3: build it, but they're also kind of growing it.

536
00:30:03,440 --> 00:30:06,640
Speaker 1: Be amazing, and they tend to it as it grows.

537
00:30:06,640 --> 00:30:09,400
Speaker 1: So I wanted to read another section from the study

538
00:30:09,440 --> 00:30:12,040
Speaker 1: where they talk about the evidence that the ants are

539
00:30:12,120 --> 00:30:17,720
Speaker 1: actively tending the fungus as it reinforces these structures. They say, quote,

540
00:30:17,840 --> 00:30:21,040
Speaker 1: we noted that the stems of thirty four young seedlings,

541
00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:25,040
Speaker 1: which had not yet developed leaf pouches, did not bear fungus.

542
00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:29,600
Speaker 1: Nine saplings raised in a greenhouse in the absence of alomeras.

543
00:30:29,640 --> 00:30:35,120
Speaker 1: That's the ants developed leaf pouches but never bore fungus. However,

544
00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:39,840
Speaker 1: fifteen saplings raised in the presence of ants bore mycelia,

545
00:30:40,160 --> 00:30:44,280
Speaker 1: whose development was limited to the galleries. When we eliminated

546
00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:48,000
Speaker 1: the associated ants from five of the fifteen, the fungus

547
00:30:48,040 --> 00:30:52,200
Speaker 1: on the galleries grew into a disorganized structure, and none

548
00:30:52,200 --> 00:30:55,480
Speaker 1: of the nine new stems that developed bore any fungus

549
00:30:55,520 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 1: at all. Okay, so the fungus is only showing up

550
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:01,240
Speaker 1: on the plant when the ants are there on the plant.

551
00:31:01,600 --> 00:31:03,480
Speaker 1: And if you take the ants away from the plant

552
00:31:03,560 --> 00:31:07,200
Speaker 1: after they've been using the fungus to reinforce their their galleries,

553
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:10,360
Speaker 1: the fungus kind of grows out of control in what

554
00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:13,800
Speaker 1: they call a disorganized structure. But with the ants still there,

555
00:31:14,160 --> 00:31:17,000
Speaker 1: it stays nice and tightly formed around the holes in

556
00:31:17,040 --> 00:31:21,320
Speaker 1: the galleries. So they're tending their garden. It's like a

557
00:31:21,360 --> 00:31:22,960
Speaker 1: living I don't know, it's like if you had to

558
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:27,480
Speaker 1: have maintenance workers constantly sort of gardening and tending to

559
00:31:27,640 --> 00:31:30,040
Speaker 1: the fungus that held up your skyscrapers.

560
00:31:30,680 --> 00:31:31,160
Speaker 3: Wow.

561
00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:34,960
Speaker 1: But here's where we start getting to the trapping. So

562
00:31:35,080 --> 00:31:37,680
Speaker 1: the authors of this study say that they noticed that

563
00:31:37,760 --> 00:31:42,080
Speaker 1: sometimes larger insects would become immobilized on the surface of

564
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:45,600
Speaker 1: the galleries. So you got these these spongy surfaces, ants

565
00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:49,360
Speaker 1: crawling underneath them, and sometimes like a locust or a butterfly,

566
00:31:49,520 --> 00:31:52,920
Speaker 1: some bigger insect lands on the gallery and then it

567
00:31:52,960 --> 00:31:56,800
Speaker 1: gets stuck. What's going on here, Well, they started to

568
00:31:56,880 --> 00:31:59,840
Speaker 1: investigate whether the galleries could be functioning as a type

569
00:31:59,880 --> 00:32:02,800
Speaker 1: of trap. And here's what they say about how the

570
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:08,280
Speaker 1: ambush works quote. Our observations revealed that Alomiras workers hide

571
00:32:08,320 --> 00:32:11,280
Speaker 1: in the galleries with their heads just under the holes,

572
00:32:11,760 --> 00:32:16,680
Speaker 1: mandibles wide open, seemingly waiting for an insect to land.

573
00:32:16,720 --> 00:32:20,280
Speaker 1: To kill the insect, they grasp its free legs, antennae,

574
00:32:20,480 --> 00:32:23,280
Speaker 1: or wings and move in and out of the holes

575
00:32:23,280 --> 00:32:27,560
Speaker 1: in opposite directions until the prey is progressively stretched against

576
00:32:27,560 --> 00:32:31,360
Speaker 1: the gallery and swarms of workers can sting it. The

577
00:32:31,400 --> 00:32:34,520
Speaker 1: ants then slide the prey over the top of the gallery,

578
00:32:34,600 --> 00:32:37,200
Speaker 1: again moving in and out of the holes, but this

579
00:32:37,360 --> 00:32:40,719
Speaker 1: time in the same direction. They move it slowly towards

580
00:32:40,800 --> 00:32:43,760
Speaker 1: a leaf pouch where they carve it up. Oh and

581
00:32:43,800 --> 00:32:46,320
Speaker 1: then once they get to one of these population centers

582
00:32:46,320 --> 00:32:49,280
Speaker 1: of the colony, you know, the these nest sites in

583
00:32:49,320 --> 00:32:52,960
Speaker 1: the leaf pouches, they tend to feed bits of protein

584
00:32:53,120 --> 00:32:54,760
Speaker 1: from the insect to their young.

585
00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:59,760
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, this is amazing and suitably brutal for the

586
00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:04,560
Speaker 3: world of ants. So this, this larger creature lands or

587
00:33:04,600 --> 00:33:08,240
Speaker 3: walks on to the structure. You know, they're reaching out

588
00:33:08,240 --> 00:33:11,600
Speaker 3: of holes to pull it straight down, and then they

589
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:13,719
Speaker 3: transfer it to a place where they can carve it up.

590
00:33:14,400 --> 00:33:18,040
Speaker 1: Right. So yeah, there's no sentimentality in the world of ants,

591
00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:20,760
Speaker 1: they're just like, okay, this is edible, It's time to

592
00:33:20,760 --> 00:33:24,840
Speaker 1: get to butcher in But anyway, these observations reveal this

593
00:33:25,040 --> 00:33:29,480
Speaker 1: fascinating three way interaction between the plant, the fungus, and

594
00:33:29,560 --> 00:33:32,960
Speaker 1: the ant all sort of living together in this this

595
00:33:34,160 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 1: three way life cycle. Essentially that apparently serves the purpose

596
00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:42,680
Speaker 1: of creating a trap to get larger insects. You know

597
00:33:42,720 --> 00:33:45,800
Speaker 1: these Oh I don't think I mentioned, but the Alamiris

598
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:50,040
Speaker 1: decim articulatus ants are very small. It's a structure that

599
00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:54,680
Speaker 1: allows these tiny ants apparently to capture kill and butcher

600
00:33:54,920 --> 00:33:56,320
Speaker 1: much much larger prey.

601
00:33:57,560 --> 00:33:59,640
Speaker 3: All right, And of course the plant out of all

602
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:02,960
Speaker 3: of this gets some slight mutilation from the ants, but

603
00:34:03,200 --> 00:34:08,040
Speaker 3: is protected from larger insects that would otherwise no on

604
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:10,680
Speaker 3: it and do more harm to it than just creating

605
00:34:10,680 --> 00:34:13,240
Speaker 3: an interesting lattice work out of its body.

606
00:34:13,560 --> 00:34:16,319
Speaker 1: Presumably, I mean, I think often there is such a

607
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:19,400
Speaker 1: relationship going on. The insect also provides a benefit to

608
00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:22,440
Speaker 1: the plant somehow, though in the sources I was reading

609
00:34:22,480 --> 00:34:25,200
Speaker 1: it wasn't clear to me exactly if it's known what

610
00:34:26,120 --> 00:34:28,440
Speaker 1: the major benefit provided by the ants is, but I

611
00:34:28,440 --> 00:34:32,840
Speaker 1: would guess that's right, that they're probably protecting the plant

612
00:34:33,719 --> 00:34:37,640
Speaker 1: from herbivore large herbivore insects that would chew its leaves

613
00:34:37,680 --> 00:34:39,319
Speaker 1: down or something, But I don't know for sure. I

614
00:34:39,320 --> 00:34:40,120
Speaker 1: gotta admit right.

615
00:34:40,160 --> 00:34:42,680
Speaker 3: And then of course we also have to always realize

616
00:34:42,719 --> 00:34:46,640
Speaker 3: that in the natural world the line between parasitism and

617
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:51,440
Speaker 3: symbiosis is sometimes a bit thin. These are not relationships

618
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:54,799
Speaker 3: that are governed by strict contracts, so you might see

619
00:34:54,840 --> 00:34:58,000
Speaker 3: a little bit of push and pull over the course

620
00:34:58,040 --> 00:35:00,120
Speaker 3: of evolutionary history.

621
00:35:00,360 --> 00:35:01,799
Speaker 1: Ants will take whatever they can get.

622
00:35:02,080 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 3: You're right, so you be careful about entering into a

623
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:07,759
Speaker 3: bargain with the ants.

624
00:35:08,719 --> 00:35:10,960
Speaker 1: But on the other side of all this, I wanted

625
00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 1: to come back on it because I found a book

626
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:18,440
Speaker 1: where the trap interpretation of these structures has been challenged.

627
00:35:18,680 --> 00:35:20,480
Speaker 1: And in fact, this book was by somebody who's come

628
00:35:20,560 --> 00:35:23,279
Speaker 1: up on the on I think episodes we did about

629
00:35:23,320 --> 00:35:28,359
Speaker 1: ants last year, the biologist Mark W. Moffatt. Yes, yes, yeah,

630
00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:32,040
Speaker 1: So he has a book called Adventures among Ants that

631
00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:35,880
Speaker 1: was that came out in twenty ten University of California Press.

632
00:35:36,520 --> 00:35:39,720
Speaker 1: And in this book I found a section where Moffatt

633
00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:44,440
Speaker 1: argues that the trap interpretation of these structures built by

634
00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:49,480
Speaker 1: alameiras decim articulatis is in fact a misinterpretation. Now I'm

635
00:35:49,480 --> 00:35:51,040
Speaker 1: not sure he's right about this, but I do want

636
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:54,360
Speaker 1: to explain what he claims, so it's a bit of background.

637
00:35:54,400 --> 00:35:59,200
Speaker 1: In the section of the book directly preceding this, Moffatt

638
00:35:59,239 --> 00:36:03,000
Speaker 1: has been talking about his observations of various species of

639
00:36:03,160 --> 00:36:06,839
Speaker 1: army ants on raiding parties to forage for food and

640
00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:11,080
Speaker 1: also on defensive patrols to protect the colony and the

641
00:36:11,160 --> 00:36:14,880
Speaker 1: rating column from threats, and one of his observations in

642
00:36:14,960 --> 00:36:18,839
Speaker 1: this preceding section is how difficult it is sometimes to

643
00:36:18,960 --> 00:36:23,080
Speaker 1: tell the difference between these two behaviors and how easily

644
00:36:23,200 --> 00:36:27,799
Speaker 1: one bleeds into the other. So, according to Demoffitt, for

645
00:36:27,840 --> 00:36:31,319
Speaker 1: most army ants, their defensive attacks on a creature that

646
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:34,960
Speaker 1: is perceived to be threatening the raiding column can quickly

647
00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:37,600
Speaker 1: turn into a foraging raid in itself. So if the

648
00:36:37,640 --> 00:36:41,040
Speaker 1: threat is killed, it is pretty much immediately chopped up

649
00:36:41,080 --> 00:36:44,200
Speaker 1: into pieces and carried away as food. So it's kind

650
00:36:44,200 --> 00:36:47,400
Speaker 1: of like if you imagine every monster movie ended with

651
00:36:47,440 --> 00:36:50,640
Speaker 1: the heroes butchering and eating the monster after they finally

652
00:36:50,680 --> 00:36:51,279
Speaker 1: defeated it.

653
00:36:51,640 --> 00:36:54,840
Speaker 3: Well, we do see that sometimes. In fact, that occurs

654
00:36:54,840 --> 00:36:58,360
Speaker 3: in the Mandalorian but the case of the Great Dragon.

655
00:36:58,440 --> 00:37:02,839
Speaker 3: But but yeah, we should see more consumption of the

656
00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:05,520
Speaker 3: d of dragons and monsters and so forth. Use every

657
00:37:05,560 --> 00:37:07,040
Speaker 3: part of the monster be responsible.

658
00:37:07,480 --> 00:37:10,360
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know. I mean that's you know, humans

659
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:12,279
Speaker 1: are different than ants. I mean, ants are not going

660
00:37:12,360 --> 00:37:14,600
Speaker 1: to let anything go to waste. Humans, after you've fought

661
00:37:14,600 --> 00:37:16,400
Speaker 1: a monster, you might just want to have nothing to

662
00:37:16,440 --> 00:37:20,400
Speaker 1: do with it. To each species their own. But anyway,

663
00:37:20,600 --> 00:37:23,479
Speaker 1: so from here, Moffat moves on to describing the ant

664
00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:28,040
Speaker 1: I've been talking about Elimeris decim articulatus, and he's describing

665
00:37:28,080 --> 00:37:31,240
Speaker 1: its living situation. The one distinction he makes I couldn't

666
00:37:31,280 --> 00:37:35,239
Speaker 1: find out what was what was the disconnect here? But

667
00:37:35,440 --> 00:37:37,520
Speaker 1: he said, you remember how I said that the ants

668
00:37:37,560 --> 00:37:41,000
Speaker 1: build these gallery structures out of tricombes cut from the plants,

669
00:37:40,960 --> 00:37:44,880
Speaker 1: a little plant hairs, mixed with their own regurgitation or vomit,

670
00:37:45,480 --> 00:37:49,400
Speaker 1: and then lined with the mycelium of the fungus that

671
00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:52,160
Speaker 1: they cultivate. Mofatt describes it the same way, but he

672
00:37:52,239 --> 00:37:55,320
Speaker 1: mentions feces rather than vomit. And I don't know who's

673
00:37:55,400 --> 00:37:59,040
Speaker 1: right there. But anyway, Moffatt gives a few reasons that

674
00:37:59,160 --> 00:38:02,759
Speaker 1: he had doubts about the generally accepted interpretation of this

675
00:38:02,840 --> 00:38:07,200
Speaker 1: structure as a trap, specifically as a trap, because he

676
00:38:07,239 --> 00:38:11,520
Speaker 1: says a trap implies that, for example, a locust landing

677
00:38:11,520 --> 00:38:14,680
Speaker 1: on the ant gallery would not have landed there if

678
00:38:14,680 --> 00:38:18,080
Speaker 1: it saw the ants. The trap would be performing the

679
00:38:18,160 --> 00:38:21,880
Speaker 1: function of hiding the ants, so you know, they're hidden

680
00:38:21,920 --> 00:38:24,840
Speaker 1: beneath the vault of the gallery, so that the prey

681
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:27,680
Speaker 1: insect feels it's safe enough to land and then they

682
00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:28,680
Speaker 1: jump out and grab it.

683
00:38:29,120 --> 00:38:31,560
Speaker 3: Okay, this would be in keeping with say the trapdoor

684
00:38:31,600 --> 00:38:35,080
Speaker 3: spider would probably be a great example of this.

685
00:38:35,520 --> 00:38:38,839
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's comparable. That's how it would

686
00:38:38,880 --> 00:38:42,200
Speaker 1: function as a trap. But Moffitt writes that he thinks

687
00:38:42,239 --> 00:38:46,200
Speaker 1: this is unlikely because he doubts that grasshoppers would really

688
00:38:46,239 --> 00:38:49,479
Speaker 1: be able to notice the tiny workers of this ant

689
00:38:49,520 --> 00:38:54,680
Speaker 1: species anyway, quote particularly in mid leap, or that they

690
00:38:54,719 --> 00:38:57,360
Speaker 1: would be able to change course in mid leap after

691
00:38:57,440 --> 00:39:00,239
Speaker 1: noticing them. So he was a little iffy on that, like,

692
00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:03,560
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that the trap would really serve much

693
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:07,040
Speaker 1: purpose if it's supposed to be hiding the ants from

694
00:39:07,120 --> 00:39:09,640
Speaker 1: the prey animal, because these are insects that are much

695
00:39:09,719 --> 00:39:11,319
Speaker 1: larger than the ants anyway.

696
00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:14,400
Speaker 3: Right, So he's saying, basically saying like this might be

697
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:17,000
Speaker 3: if this was a trap, which he doesn't think it is,

698
00:39:18,080 --> 00:39:21,480
Speaker 3: it would be a preposterous trap, an unnecessary trap. And

699
00:39:21,520 --> 00:39:25,480
Speaker 3: while again we love unnecessarily complex and preposterous traps in

700
00:39:25,520 --> 00:39:29,520
Speaker 3: our cinema, we're not talking about cinema here. We're talking about.

701
00:39:29,480 --> 00:39:31,879
Speaker 1: Evolution, yeah, and sufficiency.

702
00:39:32,080 --> 00:39:35,120
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. Things need to be ruthlessly efficient, and if

703
00:39:35,120 --> 00:39:38,040
Speaker 3: it's not ruthlessly efficient, it is going to change or

704
00:39:38,080 --> 00:39:38,480
Speaker 3: go away.

705
00:39:38,800 --> 00:39:41,520
Speaker 1: But anyway, those are his suspicions, so he decided to

706
00:39:41,600 --> 00:39:44,280
Speaker 1: put them to the test. So he tells a story

707
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:48,279
Speaker 1: of that he was studying colonies of this ant in

708
00:39:48,360 --> 00:39:51,880
Speaker 1: the wild in Ecuador, and he put together a test

709
00:39:52,120 --> 00:39:56,160
Speaker 1: to interrogate the trap interpretation. So to read from the

710
00:39:56,200 --> 00:39:59,520
Speaker 1: section of Moffitt's book where he describes this test, he says, quote,

711
00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:02,760
Speaker 1: hung a mosquito net over a plant with a thriving

712
00:40:02,800 --> 00:40:07,680
Speaker 1: alomeras colony, added one hundred grasshoppers and katie diids, and

713
00:40:07,760 --> 00:40:11,200
Speaker 1: sat inside for the next five mornings. An unusual case

714
00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:14,320
Speaker 1: of using a mosquito net to keep insects in instead

715
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:18,120
Speaker 1: of out. Even after the grasshoppers settled down, they were

716
00:40:18,160 --> 00:40:21,680
Speaker 1: indiscriminate in their movements, hopping from where the ants hid

717
00:40:21,800 --> 00:40:24,799
Speaker 1: under the structures to where ants strolled in full view,

718
00:40:25,160 --> 00:40:27,600
Speaker 1: to where there were no ants at all. When they

719
00:40:27,680 --> 00:40:31,080
Speaker 1: landed among the ants, even on the structures, they got

720
00:40:31,080 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 1: away unhurt. Certainly, if the structures served as traps, they

721
00:40:35,160 --> 00:40:39,279
Speaker 1: were inefficient ones. So he's saying in his observations here,

722
00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:44,560
Speaker 1: he's seeing very little correlation between the structures and the

723
00:40:44,640 --> 00:40:47,840
Speaker 1: hunting behaviors of the ants or the behaviors of the

724
00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:52,480
Speaker 1: prey insects. So what purpose does he believed the galleries

725
00:40:52,520 --> 00:40:55,759
Speaker 1: are serving. Well, he points out that the galleries tend

726
00:40:55,800 --> 00:41:00,120
Speaker 1: to run along the stems of the tree, connecting each

727
00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:04,400
Speaker 1: nest pouch to another nest mouch, and they quote contain

728
00:41:04,480 --> 00:41:08,319
Speaker 1: a highway of workers commuting from nest to nest. And

729
00:41:08,320 --> 00:41:11,279
Speaker 1: then he points out that other insects, including other ant species,

730
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:17,000
Speaker 1: do sometimes build various types of physical covers over their trails,

731
00:41:17,120 --> 00:41:21,200
Speaker 1: which are generally interpreted to be defensive in nature. For example,

732
00:41:21,239 --> 00:41:24,840
Speaker 1: some marauder and driver ants have been observed to build

733
00:41:24,960 --> 00:41:28,359
Speaker 1: soil covers over their trails, So could that be what's

734
00:41:28,400 --> 00:41:30,440
Speaker 1: going on in this case? Could these galleries that the

735
00:41:30,480 --> 00:41:35,319
Speaker 1: ants build actually be defensive in nature? Another strike here?

736
00:41:35,560 --> 00:41:38,400
Speaker 1: According to Moffat, he observed that the workers at his

737
00:41:38,440 --> 00:41:41,880
Speaker 1: study site did not actually sit and wait at the

738
00:41:41,920 --> 00:41:44,480
Speaker 1: holes in these galleries, as you might expect them to

739
00:41:44,520 --> 00:41:47,759
Speaker 1: do if they were planning an ambush. He says that

740
00:41:47,840 --> 00:41:50,480
Speaker 1: when conditions were normal, so like if the colony is

741
00:41:50,560 --> 00:41:52,960
Speaker 1: not in an agitated state, things are just sort of

742
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:56,000
Speaker 1: going along normally. Most of the gaps in the gallery

743
00:41:56,040 --> 00:42:00,680
Speaker 1: structures were unoccupied. But he says this chain when there

744
00:42:00,719 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 1: appeared to be some kind of threat to the colony. Quote,

745
00:42:04,320 --> 00:42:06,960
Speaker 1: after a day of pulling grasshoppers from my hair, I

746
00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:11,440
Speaker 1: noticed interlopers of another ant, a species of Fidolei or

747
00:42:11,560 --> 00:42:14,719
Speaker 1: big headed ant, climbing the plant to pin down a

748
00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:19,279
Speaker 1: wounded grasshopper missed by the Alomiras. Upon the arrival of

749
00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:23,600
Speaker 1: the fidole ants, the Alomiras workers began to guard each

750
00:42:23,640 --> 00:42:27,080
Speaker 1: of the several dozen entrances to their arcade. And that's

751
00:42:27,120 --> 00:42:29,000
Speaker 1: the arcade, is what he's calling the things that the

752
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:32,799
Speaker 1: other authors called the galleries the several dozen entrances to

753
00:42:32,880 --> 00:42:37,480
Speaker 1: their arcade nearest the commotion caused by the intruders. These guards,

754
00:42:37,600 --> 00:42:41,560
Speaker 1: aided by nest mates roaming the arcade surface, also caught

755
00:42:41,600 --> 00:42:45,360
Speaker 1: and killed one fidoli and carried it off. So, based

756
00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:48,919
Speaker 1: on these observations, moffittt argues that the galleries are more

757
00:42:49,080 --> 00:42:53,799
Speaker 1: likely defensive to protect trails of workers moving from one

758
00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:57,120
Speaker 1: leaf pouch to the other, but that when something attacks

759
00:42:57,200 --> 00:43:00,960
Speaker 1: or threatens the colony, the workers quickly shift their behavior

760
00:43:01,040 --> 00:43:05,000
Speaker 1: from travel to defense, and then they occupy the holes

761
00:43:05,040 --> 00:43:08,759
Speaker 1: and start biting violently at anything that comes near. And

762
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:11,520
Speaker 1: of course, if they are able to immobilize an attacker

763
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:15,000
Speaker 1: or not necessarily an attacker, if they're able to immobilize

764
00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:17,960
Speaker 1: whatever it is that put them on the defense, they

765
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:21,920
Speaker 1: immediately shift rolls again and turn that threat into food

766
00:43:22,040 --> 00:43:25,160
Speaker 1: and begin butchering it for the colony again, to cook

767
00:43:25,200 --> 00:43:26,400
Speaker 1: the monster, so to speak.

768
00:43:27,000 --> 00:43:29,239
Speaker 3: So we might be better to think of these as

769
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:33,240
Speaker 3: defensive fortifications, kind of like to use like a medieval

770
00:43:33,719 --> 00:43:36,720
Speaker 3: castle or fortress scenario. It's kind of like the various

771
00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:45,120
Speaker 3: crinolations and murder holes and arrow slits, except with the

772
00:43:45,160 --> 00:43:47,759
Speaker 3: added point that in this case the occupants of the

773
00:43:47,800 --> 00:43:51,160
Speaker 3: castle or fortress would eat those that they killed defending it.

774
00:43:51,600 --> 00:43:54,960
Speaker 1: Right, That's what Moffatt argues, And so to finish up

775
00:43:54,960 --> 00:43:56,920
Speaker 1: his section, he says in the end, quote in this

776
00:43:57,000 --> 00:44:00,640
Speaker 1: way the organization of a super organism, referring to ants.

777
00:44:00,680 --> 00:44:02,799
Speaker 1: There because I think you can make the argument that,

778
00:44:03,160 --> 00:44:06,040
Speaker 1: you know, an ant colony might be best understood as

779
00:44:06,200 --> 00:44:09,600
Speaker 1: one organism rather than many. It is a super organism

780
00:44:09,640 --> 00:44:13,399
Speaker 1: composed of many different bodies, he says it quote can

781
00:44:13,480 --> 00:44:16,920
Speaker 1: be more responsive than the tissues in a body. Trail

782
00:44:17,000 --> 00:44:20,560
Speaker 1: Bound workers can shift seamlessly in their behavior from transport

783
00:44:20,640 --> 00:44:24,520
Speaker 1: to protection to predation. It's as if one's liver could

784
00:44:24,640 --> 00:44:28,440
Speaker 1: change function when the heart is incapacitated and pump blood.

785
00:44:29,719 --> 00:44:32,640
Speaker 1: So obviously I don't know who's right here. Moffatt's book

786
00:44:32,680 --> 00:44:35,359
Speaker 1: is more than ten years old at this point, and

787
00:44:35,480 --> 00:44:38,480
Speaker 1: most of the things I read about this ant species

788
00:44:38,480 --> 00:44:43,080
Speaker 1: alomeris decim articulatas still describe the galleries as ambush traps.

789
00:44:43,600 --> 00:44:46,759
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure which interpretation is correct, but I

790
00:44:46,800 --> 00:44:50,040
Speaker 1: do think either way, Moffatt makes a very interesting point

791
00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:53,680
Speaker 1: about the fluidity of function when it comes to ant behavior.

792
00:44:53,719 --> 00:44:57,120
Speaker 1: How you know one moment's enemy is the next moment's lunch.

793
00:44:57,680 --> 00:45:00,600
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, Like the ant colony is not just trying

794
00:45:00,600 --> 00:45:04,120
Speaker 3: to do one thing. It has a lot of objectives

795
00:45:04,120 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 3: and it has again this fluidity of function. Whereas it's

796
00:45:07,920 --> 00:45:11,560
Speaker 3: far easier to look at a web building spider and

797
00:45:11,680 --> 00:45:16,480
Speaker 3: know what's up. You know that the web is its purpose,

798
00:45:16,520 --> 00:45:19,239
Speaker 3: the web is kind of its sole, and there's no

799
00:45:19,360 --> 00:45:22,080
Speaker 3: question about why it constructed the web.

800
00:45:22,000 --> 00:45:25,000
Speaker 1: I guess. Also, this raises another question about what counts

801
00:45:25,040 --> 00:45:28,799
Speaker 1: as a quote trap because assuming for a second that

802
00:45:28,840 --> 00:45:31,239
Speaker 1: Moffatt's interpretation is correct, I don't know it is, But

803
00:45:31,440 --> 00:45:34,640
Speaker 1: if he's right that these structures are primarily to defend

804
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:38,160
Speaker 1: the ant trails, but then when something when a threat

805
00:45:38,200 --> 00:45:41,319
Speaker 1: presents itself, they turn around and use the holes in

806
00:45:41,360 --> 00:45:44,279
Speaker 1: the galleries as murder holes and then eat whatever they

807
00:45:44,280 --> 00:45:48,399
Speaker 1: can immobilize, does that count as a trap? Like how

808
00:45:48,520 --> 00:45:52,120
Speaker 1: specialized does a structure have to be for the purpose

809
00:45:52,200 --> 00:45:55,000
Speaker 1: of catching prey in order to be thought of as

810
00:45:55,040 --> 00:45:58,239
Speaker 1: a trap, Because you can imagine other examples where an

811
00:45:58,280 --> 00:46:01,480
Speaker 1: animal builds a structure that's primary defensive in some way,

812
00:46:01,520 --> 00:46:03,640
Speaker 1: it's more like the home from the example you talked

813
00:46:03,640 --> 00:46:05,520
Speaker 1: about at the beginning in that book. You know, it's

814
00:46:05,520 --> 00:46:08,279
Speaker 1: a barrier between you and the outside world. Yet it

815
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:12,400
Speaker 1: has some kind of feature that like another animal or

816
00:46:12,400 --> 00:46:15,080
Speaker 1: something could get stuck on or some you know, it

817
00:46:15,200 --> 00:46:20,799
Speaker 1: somehow allows you to sometimes opportunistically harvest from the structure

818
00:46:21,200 --> 00:46:23,560
Speaker 1: and then eat from it. And does that count as

819
00:46:23,560 --> 00:46:24,000
Speaker 1: a trap?

820
00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:26,799
Speaker 3: Now? I haven't seen this movie in a very long time,

821
00:46:27,040 --> 00:46:30,400
Speaker 3: but but I think there might be something comparable in

822
00:46:30,440 --> 00:46:32,399
Speaker 3: Home Alone too, am I right? Oh?

823
00:46:32,480 --> 00:46:34,600
Speaker 1: Lost in New York, the one with Tim Curry?

824
00:46:34,960 --> 00:46:36,359
Speaker 3: Oh? What Tim Curry's in that one?

825
00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:38,120
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, I think he plays a He plays a

826
00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:39,560
Speaker 1: snooty bell hop or something.

827
00:46:39,640 --> 00:46:40,840
Speaker 3: Okay, that sounds about right.

828
00:46:41,239 --> 00:46:44,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, I think the Actually, we were trying

829
00:46:44,520 --> 00:46:46,680
Speaker 1: to figure this out what this was, and Seth's just

830
00:46:46,760 --> 00:46:49,880
Speaker 1: chimed in to let us know he was right. The

831
00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:52,520
Speaker 1: house where he builds the traps and Home Alone two

832
00:46:52,880 --> 00:46:56,480
Speaker 1: is a house that's like under renovation, so it already

833
00:46:56,640 --> 00:46:59,239
Speaker 1: has feature Like, all the traps don't have to be

834
00:46:59,719 --> 00:47:02,960
Speaker 1: in from scratch. There are already features of the house.

835
00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:04,640
Speaker 1: I don't remember exactly what they are, but there are

836
00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:06,640
Speaker 1: things that are dangerous about it already.

837
00:47:07,120 --> 00:47:15,719
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, yeah.

838
00:47:15,040 --> 00:47:17,360
Speaker 1: But I wanted to talk about my second example of

839
00:47:17,440 --> 00:47:21,080
Speaker 1: ants potentially doing something that you could interpret as a

840
00:47:21,120 --> 00:47:25,799
Speaker 1: trap ok, and this one also involves using foreign materials

841
00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:29,520
Speaker 1: around the nest. So the second example was described in

842
00:47:29,600 --> 00:47:32,400
Speaker 1: a paper that I was reading published in twenty nineteen

843
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:39,359
Speaker 1: in the journal Ecological Entomology by Innacio Gomez Diego, Santiago

844
00:47:39,520 --> 00:47:44,880
Speaker 1: Ricardo Campos, and Heraldo Vasconcelos. It was called why do

845
00:47:45,120 --> 00:47:51,000
Speaker 1: fight oly oxyops ants place feathers around their nests? And

846
00:47:51,080 --> 00:47:54,040
Speaker 1: I also got some additional information from reading an article

847
00:47:54,080 --> 00:47:57,440
Speaker 1: about the study published in Scientific American by Joshua rapp

848
00:47:57,520 --> 00:48:01,000
Speaker 1: Learn in November twenty nineteen. But here's the deal. So

849
00:48:01,120 --> 00:48:05,040
Speaker 1: there is this species of ant called Fidolei oxyops. We

850
00:48:05,040 --> 00:48:07,440
Speaker 1: were already talking about some fidoli ants in the last

851
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:11,440
Speaker 1: example because the remember the fidoli ants invaded the tree

852
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:15,840
Speaker 1: and then they got kind of butchered by the alomiras ants.

853
00:48:16,239 --> 00:48:18,680
Speaker 1: But fidoli ants are a genus known as the big

854
00:48:18,719 --> 00:48:23,440
Speaker 1: head ants, and this species, in particular, fidoli Oxyops, is

855
00:48:23,560 --> 00:48:26,799
Speaker 1: native to South American savannahs. So these would be you know,

856
00:48:26,880 --> 00:48:31,840
Speaker 1: grasslands ants. Sometimes they appear to do something pretty weird.

857
00:48:32,640 --> 00:48:37,759
Speaker 1: They collect feathers and place them around the entrance of

858
00:48:37,840 --> 00:48:41,120
Speaker 1: their nests. So, if you imagine the nest is buried,

859
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:44,719
Speaker 1: the entrance is basically a hole in the ground, and

860
00:48:44,800 --> 00:48:47,920
Speaker 1: then you might just find feathers all around the holes,

861
00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:51,320
Speaker 1: scattered around on the ground outside the hole. That's weird.

862
00:48:51,360 --> 00:48:53,759
Speaker 1: It might make it look like the ants ate a

863
00:48:53,800 --> 00:48:56,320
Speaker 1: live chicken or something, but that is not what happened.

864
00:48:56,560 --> 00:48:59,400
Speaker 1: They appear to collect the feathers and put them there.

865
00:48:59,800 --> 00:49:01,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, it kind of looks like there's a hole in

866
00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:05,080
Speaker 3: the ground and like a bird was sucked down that hole,

867
00:49:05,160 --> 00:49:08,640
Speaker 3: and this is these are the cartoonish remnants of that incident.

868
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:10,800
Speaker 1: I thought the same thing. Yeah, I was like, hmmm,

869
00:49:10,920 --> 00:49:13,799
Speaker 1: pop and then just puff of feathers they settle around it.

870
00:49:14,280 --> 00:49:16,320
Speaker 1: But no, that is not what has happened. The ants

871
00:49:16,360 --> 00:49:21,160
Speaker 1: put the feathers there. Strange. So this paper published in

872
00:49:21,160 --> 00:49:26,239
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen in Ecological Entomology, it claims that these feathers

873
00:49:26,719 --> 00:49:31,520
Speaker 1: function as bait to attract prey animals, which then tumble

874
00:49:31,760 --> 00:49:35,640
Speaker 1: into the nest entrance as if it were a pit trap.

875
00:49:36,280 --> 00:49:38,920
Speaker 1: And the Scientific American article actually reports a bit of

876
00:49:38,920 --> 00:49:41,440
Speaker 1: the background on the paper. It says that the studies.

877
00:49:41,480 --> 00:49:45,719
Speaker 1: First author in Nacio Gomez, is an ecologist at the

878
00:49:45,719 --> 00:49:50,359
Speaker 1: Federal University of Visosa in Brazil, and while walking around

879
00:49:50,440 --> 00:49:54,319
Speaker 1: city parks and his college campus, he noticed examples of

880
00:49:54,360 --> 00:49:58,840
Speaker 1: these ant nest entrances with feathers all around him. Apparently

881
00:49:58,880 --> 00:50:02,439
Speaker 1: this had been observed, and also I was looking at

882
00:50:02,640 --> 00:50:07,080
Speaker 1: another paper about this ant species, fidally oxyops. This one

883
00:50:07,239 --> 00:50:10,480
Speaker 1: was by Diego asis at All from twenty twenty one,

884
00:50:10,560 --> 00:50:13,640
Speaker 1: and this paper said that in addition to feathers, there

885
00:50:13,640 --> 00:50:18,640
Speaker 1: will sometimes be other objects around these entrances, including shells,

886
00:50:19,239 --> 00:50:24,200
Speaker 1: flower pedals, and seeds. But this study in particular was

887
00:50:24,520 --> 00:50:29,280
Speaker 1: focusing on the feathers, and so he noticed these feathers

888
00:50:29,320 --> 00:50:32,160
Speaker 1: around the entrances and he wondered what was the deal

889
00:50:32,200 --> 00:50:35,359
Speaker 1: with this. Apparently this had been observed before, and there

890
00:50:35,400 --> 00:50:38,920
Speaker 1: were already a couple of untested hypotheses in the scientific

891
00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:43,040
Speaker 1: literature about what the feathers were doing there. One idea

892
00:50:43,239 --> 00:50:47,040
Speaker 1: was that the feathers could collect do in arid regions,

893
00:50:47,040 --> 00:50:49,799
Speaker 1: so they would help provide the ants with water in

894
00:50:49,880 --> 00:50:52,759
Speaker 1: the mornings, and the other idea was that some of

895
00:50:52,840 --> 00:50:56,760
Speaker 1: the feathers could serve as lures, attracting prey to the nest,

896
00:50:57,480 --> 00:51:01,600
Speaker 1: and so the twenty nineteen study tested both. In one experiment,

897
00:51:01,640 --> 00:51:06,280
Speaker 1: the researchers supplied the ant colonies with water soaked cotton balls,

898
00:51:06,280 --> 00:51:08,400
Speaker 1: so made sure they had access to plenty of water,

899
00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:11,960
Speaker 1: but the ants in these cases preferred to collect feathers anyway.

900
00:51:11,960 --> 00:51:14,359
Speaker 1: It did not seem like access to water played any

901
00:51:14,480 --> 00:51:18,919
Speaker 1: role in their desire to collect feathers, and this could

902
00:51:18,960 --> 00:51:22,440
Speaker 1: be evidence that the feathers were not primarily for collecting water.

903
00:51:23,040 --> 00:51:26,000
Speaker 1: But another test was designed to see if feathers scattered

904
00:51:26,000 --> 00:51:29,480
Speaker 1: on the ground would attract prey. So they tested this

905
00:51:29,560 --> 00:51:33,360
Speaker 1: with artificial traps that were made to resemble the nest

906
00:51:33,520 --> 00:51:36,680
Speaker 1: entrances of these ants, and the team found that if

907
00:51:36,719 --> 00:51:39,239
Speaker 1: you put out a trap and scatter feathers around it,

908
00:51:39,440 --> 00:51:43,319
Speaker 1: for some reason, it will tend to trap more just

909
00:51:43,360 --> 00:51:46,880
Speaker 1: sort of wanderers, you know, arthropods that are out on

910
00:51:46,920 --> 00:51:51,840
Speaker 1: the ground, than traps without feathers, And so interesting question

911
00:51:52,000 --> 00:51:54,360
Speaker 1: why would they do that. Why would a hole in

912
00:51:54,400 --> 00:51:57,320
Speaker 1: the ground surrounded by feathers get more bugs to fall

913
00:51:57,360 --> 00:52:00,959
Speaker 1: into it. It's not known, but Gomez suggests that maybe

914
00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:03,719
Speaker 1: it's something about the smell of the feathers, something about

915
00:52:03,719 --> 00:52:07,080
Speaker 1: the visual appearance. Maybe a quote he gives to the

916
00:52:07,080 --> 00:52:10,680
Speaker 1: Scientific American article, he says, just in general, soil insects

917
00:52:10,719 --> 00:52:14,920
Speaker 1: are quote very curious, So maybe putting an unusual item

918
00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:17,719
Speaker 1: around the entrance to the nest will just tend to

919
00:52:17,760 --> 00:52:20,680
Speaker 1: get wandering bugs to walk up to it and see

920
00:52:20,719 --> 00:52:24,520
Speaker 1: if it's something of use to them. But I think

921
00:52:24,560 --> 00:52:29,000
Speaker 1: this would not count just as baiting the way the

922
00:52:29,040 --> 00:52:32,319
Speaker 1: burrowing owl example would with the cow dung or the

923
00:52:32,320 --> 00:52:35,440
Speaker 1: bison dung, because in this case it's not just to

924
00:52:35,560 --> 00:52:39,160
Speaker 1: get the insects close to the nest. In this case,

925
00:52:39,200 --> 00:52:43,200
Speaker 1: the actual nest entrances, basically holes in the ground, function

926
00:52:43,360 --> 00:52:46,880
Speaker 1: quite well as pit traps because once the prey insect

927
00:52:46,920 --> 00:52:49,839
Speaker 1: falls in, they have difficulty climbing back out, and the

928
00:52:49,880 --> 00:52:53,400
Speaker 1: ants will rather quickly grab and butcher them. Now, this

929
00:52:53,520 --> 00:52:57,359
Speaker 1: is clearly not the only way this ant species has

930
00:52:57,360 --> 00:53:01,560
Speaker 1: to acquire prey. Fidolioxyops do lead the nest to acquire prey.

931
00:53:01,640 --> 00:53:05,440
Speaker 1: They forage like other ant species. But it's possible that

932
00:53:05,640 --> 00:53:08,640
Speaker 1: using the nest as a pit trap and surrounding it

933
00:53:08,680 --> 00:53:13,560
Speaker 1: with feathers as some kind of evolved behavior for luring

934
00:53:13,680 --> 00:53:18,239
Speaker 1: more insects into the hole that helps the colony supplement

935
00:53:18,280 --> 00:53:21,239
Speaker 1: their diet during especially times of the year, such as

936
00:53:21,280 --> 00:53:24,520
Speaker 1: the dry season in this region when prey is more scarce,

937
00:53:24,600 --> 00:53:25,359
Speaker 1: harder to come by.

938
00:53:25,880 --> 00:53:29,120
Speaker 3: So they wouldn't be obligate trap builders. They would they

939
00:53:29,120 --> 00:53:31,719
Speaker 3: would be sort of they would have like a trap

940
00:53:31,760 --> 00:53:34,000
Speaker 3: business on the side. I guess you would say.

941
00:53:33,960 --> 00:53:36,880
Speaker 1: Yes, if the trap interpretation is correct, it seems like

942
00:53:36,880 --> 00:53:40,520
Speaker 1: this would be a supplemental role in getting extra food

943
00:53:40,600 --> 00:53:45,319
Speaker 1: to them, extra diet diversity, especially in times when they're

944
00:53:45,360 --> 00:53:47,960
Speaker 1: they're going to be getting less in their foraging or

945
00:53:48,000 --> 00:53:49,880
Speaker 1: maybe when they're doing less foraging.

946
00:53:50,360 --> 00:53:53,920
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, because they're you know, again they're altering their

947
00:53:53,960 --> 00:53:59,840
Speaker 3: immediate environment anyway. There and then again, a whole like

948
00:54:00,080 --> 00:54:03,879
Speaker 3: this is not a huge energy investment.

949
00:54:05,360 --> 00:54:06,440
Speaker 1: Is already part of the nest.

950
00:54:06,680 --> 00:54:08,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, already part of the nest. I guess the question

951
00:54:09,040 --> 00:54:11,799
Speaker 3: is coming back to those those reasons that were put

952
00:54:11,840 --> 00:54:16,279
Speaker 3: forth earlier that we don't see more pit traps. Does

953
00:54:16,360 --> 00:54:20,120
Speaker 3: this would this make the the ant population more visible

954
00:54:20,160 --> 00:54:21,279
Speaker 3: to potential predators?

955
00:54:22,200 --> 00:54:22,600
Speaker 1: Yeah?

956
00:54:22,760 --> 00:54:25,920
Speaker 3: I mean maybe so, maybe not. Maybe maybe the animals

957
00:54:25,960 --> 00:54:30,120
Speaker 3: that would be interested in eating the ants already would

958
00:54:30,160 --> 00:54:32,600
Speaker 3: be able to detect their presence. And then again also

959
00:54:32,760 --> 00:54:36,360
Speaker 3: the ants have more capabilities than that one little larva

960
00:54:36,440 --> 00:54:38,160
Speaker 3: at the bottom of a small pit. You know, we're

961
00:54:38,200 --> 00:54:42,400
Speaker 3: not dealing with one organism. We're dealing with this, uh,

962
00:54:42,480 --> 00:54:46,280
Speaker 3: this entire colony of organisms that that kind of behave

963
00:54:46,400 --> 00:54:47,600
Speaker 3: as a single organism.

964
00:54:47,920 --> 00:54:49,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, obviously I don't know what all the you know,

965
00:54:49,960 --> 00:54:53,759
Speaker 1: the cost benefit analysis of this evolutionary calculus would be.

966
00:54:54,320 --> 00:54:58,759
Speaker 1: But but yeah, there must be some reason why by

967
00:54:59,120 --> 00:55:01,600
Speaker 1: having your ant nest a as a pit trap and

968
00:55:01,680 --> 00:55:05,960
Speaker 1: this environment for this ant is is not such a

969
00:55:06,080 --> 00:55:09,040
Speaker 1: it's not such a danger that it outweighs the benefit

970
00:55:09,120 --> 00:55:11,320
Speaker 1: of getting some bugs to fall in as free meals.

971
00:55:12,440 --> 00:55:15,440
Speaker 1: But I also like this because it's like by house analogy.

972
00:55:15,480 --> 00:55:19,320
Speaker 1: It's like if your entire house was just like below

973
00:55:19,400 --> 00:55:21,840
Speaker 1: the ground and the entrance to the house was a

974
00:55:21,840 --> 00:55:25,920
Speaker 1: spike pit trap like a tiger trap. Yeah, just waited

975
00:55:25,920 --> 00:55:28,480
Speaker 1: for things to fall in and be like, oh bonus,

976
00:55:28,480 --> 00:55:32,400
Speaker 1: here's dinner, and you always and you had the lures,

977
00:55:32,400 --> 00:55:33,840
Speaker 1: you had the feathers all around. I don't know what

978
00:55:33,880 --> 00:55:35,920
Speaker 1: that would be in the human example, you put just

979
00:55:35,960 --> 00:55:39,319
Speaker 1: cotton candy around the around the trap that you come

980
00:55:39,360 --> 00:55:39,719
Speaker 1: in through.

981
00:55:40,280 --> 00:55:44,120
Speaker 3: Well, this is certainly another fascinating example. Yeah, and I

982
00:55:44,160 --> 00:55:47,000
Speaker 3: love how both present the possibility of ants building traps.

983
00:55:47,400 --> 00:55:50,600
Speaker 3: But since they are ants, like it's it's not that

984
00:55:50,719 --> 00:55:54,040
Speaker 3: cut and dry, like, ants have a complexity all their own,

985
00:55:54,360 --> 00:55:55,960
Speaker 3: so you can't really look at them in the same

986
00:55:55,960 --> 00:55:59,000
Speaker 3: way that you would look at a single solitary spider

987
00:55:59,520 --> 00:56:02,719
Speaker 3: or certainly even you know, the human example, Like what

988
00:56:02,840 --> 00:56:04,800
Speaker 3: we do with traps and how we think about traps

989
00:56:05,080 --> 00:56:07,359
Speaker 3: is a rather different scenario compared to anything, you know,

990
00:56:07,400 --> 00:56:11,000
Speaker 3: anything that we're seeing in several of these animal examples.

991
00:56:11,280 --> 00:56:14,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I guess that does it for ant traps

992
00:56:14,640 --> 00:56:15,160
Speaker 1: on my end.

993
00:56:15,239 --> 00:56:18,080
Speaker 3: But yeah, well this was fun. Who knows what the

994
00:56:18,120 --> 00:56:22,040
Speaker 3: future will hold. Perhaps there'll be more exciting studies coming

995
00:56:22,080 --> 00:56:25,000
Speaker 3: out of the world of ant research. I mean, it's

996
00:56:25,080 --> 00:56:28,279
Speaker 3: it's highly possible. I mean, we're still we're still making

997
00:56:28,440 --> 00:56:32,080
Speaker 3: significant discoveries about ant species and what they're up to.

998
00:56:32,440 --> 00:56:35,640
Speaker 1: There are frontiers of ants you couldn't even dream of.

999
00:56:36,320 --> 00:56:39,600
Speaker 3: There are ant traps that we don't even know about

1000
00:56:39,680 --> 00:56:41,799
Speaker 3: yet because they haven't been sprung on us.

1001
00:56:41,920 --> 00:56:43,680
Speaker 1: When you fall into them. You go through the two

1002
00:56:43,719 --> 00:56:49,000
Speaker 1: thousand and one stargate and in the room with the

1003
00:56:49,120 --> 00:56:49,960
Speaker 1: French furniture.

1004
00:56:52,480 --> 00:56:54,680
Speaker 3: You know, we've never watched an ant movie for a

1005
00:56:54,680 --> 00:56:57,280
Speaker 3: weird house cinema. I wonder if we should at some point.

1006
00:56:57,520 --> 00:57:00,680
Speaker 1: Oh, I have for years been looking at the cover

1007
00:57:00,960 --> 00:57:05,799
Speaker 1: of a Blu ray at Videodrome called Phase four. It's

1008
00:57:05,800 --> 00:57:08,120
Speaker 1: a picture of a hand with some ants. I know

1009
00:57:08,160 --> 00:57:10,360
Speaker 1: it involves ants. I don't know anything else.

1010
00:57:10,880 --> 00:57:13,520
Speaker 3: I guess the question I would have, especially after talking

1011
00:57:13,600 --> 00:57:17,760
Speaker 3: about ants like this again, is are we looking at

1012
00:57:17,760 --> 00:57:21,160
Speaker 3: thinking about movies that have a giant ant in them

1013
00:57:21,280 --> 00:57:24,360
Speaker 3: and have encounters with various giant ants, or is it

1014
00:57:24,400 --> 00:57:27,800
Speaker 3: truly about the ants as this kind of super organism

1015
00:57:28,360 --> 00:57:29,560
Speaker 3: And I like the latter.

1016
00:57:29,640 --> 00:57:29,840
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1017
00:57:29,960 --> 00:57:33,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, though, maybe having a giant sized ant is kind

1018
00:57:33,800 --> 00:57:37,600
Speaker 3: of a way through our fantastic fiction that we think

1019
00:57:37,640 --> 00:57:40,600
Speaker 3: about super organisms. So it's kind of like, yes, the

1020
00:57:40,600 --> 00:57:43,120
Speaker 3: ants are small, but they work together and they're able

1021
00:57:43,120 --> 00:57:45,000
Speaker 3: to do great things. So we just think of like

1022
00:57:45,040 --> 00:57:48,400
Speaker 3: a giant ant. That's like just one way of contemplating

1023
00:57:48,400 --> 00:57:52,600
Speaker 3: what they're capable of. So the next time ant movies

1024
00:57:52,640 --> 00:57:55,120
Speaker 3: come back, if you're out there thinking about resurrecting the

1025
00:57:55,160 --> 00:57:59,520
Speaker 3: giant ant movie, consider having them like tear people apart.

1026
00:57:59,560 --> 00:58:02,960
Speaker 3: Things like that. You know, crawling out of windows, pulling

1027
00:58:02,960 --> 00:58:05,920
Speaker 3: people taunt against the sides of a building and then

1028
00:58:06,400 --> 00:58:08,960
Speaker 3: transferring them up to the rooftop and tearing them to pieces.

1029
00:58:09,240 --> 00:58:11,040
Speaker 1: Nice final processing.

1030
00:58:11,400 --> 00:58:14,720
Speaker 3: Yes, all right, well we're gonna gohe and close out

1031
00:58:14,760 --> 00:58:16,880
Speaker 3: this episode here, but we'd love to hear from everybody

1032
00:58:16,880 --> 00:58:20,480
Speaker 3: out there about traps, traps and movies, Traps in the

1033
00:58:20,520 --> 00:58:24,200
Speaker 3: human world, traps in the animal world. Is there is

1034
00:58:24,240 --> 00:58:26,200
Speaker 3: there some corner of this topic you'd like for us

1035
00:58:26,280 --> 00:58:29,000
Speaker 3: to explore more in the future. Let us know we

1036
00:58:29,040 --> 00:58:30,880
Speaker 3: would love to hear from you. If you would like

1037
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:33,000
Speaker 3: to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

1038
00:58:33,320 --> 00:58:35,280
Speaker 3: you will find them in the Stuff to Blow Your

1039
00:58:35,280 --> 00:58:38,360
Speaker 3: Mind podcast feed Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener

1040
00:58:38,360 --> 00:58:42,520
Speaker 3: mail on Monday's short form artifact on Wednesdays. On Friday,

1041
00:58:42,520 --> 00:58:44,120
Speaker 3: we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to set

1042
00:58:44,160 --> 00:58:47,840
Speaker 3: aside most serious concerns and just look at a strange film.

1043
00:58:48,520 --> 00:58:50,320
Speaker 3: As always, you can also get to us rather quickly

1044
00:58:50,360 --> 00:58:53,200
Speaker 3: by going to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

1045
00:58:53,480 --> 00:58:56,320
Speaker 1: Huge Things, So as always to our excellent audio producer

1046
00:58:56,440 --> 00:58:58,960
Speaker 1: Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in

1047
00:58:59,000 --> 00:59:01,480
Speaker 1: touch with us with back on this episode or any other,

1048
00:59:01,600 --> 00:59:04,120
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello.

1049
00:59:04,240 --> 00:59:07,040
Speaker 1: You can email us at contact and Stuff to Blow

1050
00:59:07,080 --> 00:59:15,800
Speaker 1: Your Mind dot com.

1051
00:59:15,800 --> 00:59:18,760
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1052
00:59:18,840 --> 00:59:22,680
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1053
00:59:22,760 --> 00:59:38,760
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