Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're
Speaker 1: bringing you an episode from the vault of This is
Speaker 1: AUNT War's Part three, originally aired June eighth. Let's release
Speaker 1: the ants Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and we're back with part three of our
Speaker 1: Aunt Wars episodes. Now. In the previous episodes, we've already
Speaker 1: covered a ton of different topics, the evolution of you
Speaker 1: social insects like ants um. We talked about the conflicts
Speaker 1: between army, ants and and everything in their path. We
Speaker 1: talked about theories of combat disparities and how those may
Speaker 1: apply to ants and and control the ways that's Aunt
Speaker 1: sometimes select which members of the colony go out to fight.
Speaker 1: We talked about the bivouax, the big war rig for
Speaker 1: the Queen made out of army ants um. It's been
Speaker 1: it's been a great journey so far, but we have
Speaker 1: to press on. That's right. Uh So, one thing I
Speaker 1: want to talk about it at the very start here
Speaker 1: is the idea of empires of the ants, because, as
Speaker 1: with human civilizations, apparently it's the larger ant societies that
Speaker 1: spread the most violence. Smaller ant societies are less likely
Speaker 1: to engage in any kind of protracted war against other
Speaker 1: ant species. But but here's an interesting point raised by
Speaker 1: entomologists Shawn O'Donnell in Ant Wars for Serious Science. Some
Speaker 1: species of highly successful invasive ants demonstrate unicolonality. Uh. They
Speaker 1: develop a willingness to identify members of other colonies as
Speaker 1: part of their own, and the result is a super colony,
Speaker 1: a true empire of the ants. Yeah, we discussed the
Speaker 1: super colony adaptation in our episode. It's about the multiple
Speaker 1: species of ants known as crazy ants, and this name
Speaker 1: comes from their rapid, almost frantic or radic looking movements
Speaker 1: sometimes when you like, if you watch video of them
Speaker 1: moving around on the ground, it almost looks like flies
Speaker 1: buzzing around. It looks like they're flying. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's visually, at least to us, starkly different from the
Speaker 1: sort of you know, linear lines were used to seeing
Speaker 1: for ants. Yeah, but the super coloniality issue came up
Speaker 1: in our episodes on the Mystery of Crazy ants supposedly
Speaker 1: being attracted to electricity or electrical appliances. Remember that where
Speaker 1: we're talking about all those stories people had of like
Speaker 1: the their TV being full of crazy ants and people
Speaker 1: didn't know why that was happening. That was, of course
Speaker 1: the raspberry crazy ant of the genus Nylanderia, and then
Speaker 1: we also talked about them in our episodes on Christmas Island.
Speaker 1: Remember it was the invasive species of crazy ant known
Speaker 1: as yellow crazy ants or anoplo Lepis grass sillipps that
Speaker 1: was severely threatening the Christmas Island crabs. It was actually
Speaker 1: colonies of those ants that were spraying formic acid into
Speaker 1: the eyes of the crabs and into the leg joints
Speaker 1: until they were immobilized and then the ants just eat them.
Speaker 1: And there was an interesting project to try to introduce
Speaker 1: a species of insect there to Christmas Island that would
Speaker 1: help cut down on the populations of invasive ants. But anyway,
Speaker 1: it's the tendency for crazy ants to form super colonies
Speaker 1: that is considered one factor in their success as an
Speaker 1: invasive species. Um you know, so they're super colonial, meaning
Speaker 1: that when colonies of the same species meet one another,
Speaker 1: instead of duking it out and going to battle with
Speaker 1: one another. They just act as if they were from
Speaker 1: the same colony. They team up instead of antagonizing one another.
Speaker 1: UM and there are examples where people think they've detected
Speaker 1: gigantic super colonies of these ants. One that we read
Speaker 1: in one of those previous episodes was a New York
Speaker 1: Times article that that quotes Edward Lebrun, who's in a
Speaker 1: college US at the University of Texas at Austin UM,
Speaker 1: and he apparently believes that there was a single super
Speaker 1: colony in the Texas town called Iowa Colony. I know
Speaker 1: that's confusing because we're talking about ant colonies and it's
Speaker 1: in Texas, not Iowa, but that's a town it's called
Speaker 1: Iowa Colony, and he believes that there was a super
Speaker 1: colony of crazy ants occupying up to forty two hundred
Speaker 1: acres in that town and spreading two hundred meters a
Speaker 1: year in every direction. But that's by no means the
Speaker 1: only Aunt super colony that's been found there. There are
Speaker 1: other species and other super colonies that have been found
Speaker 1: all over the continents. That's right. Mark W. Moten mentioned
Speaker 1: an extremely large super colony of Argentine Aunt that ranges
Speaker 1: from San Francisco to the Mexican border. Trillion strong and united.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a super colony, and wars rage just
Speaker 1: perpetually along its borders. He writes. Each month, millions of
Speaker 1: Argentine ants die along battlefronts that extend for miles around
Speaker 1: San Diego. Clashes occur with three other colonies and wars
Speaker 1: that may have been going on since the species arrived
Speaker 1: in the state a century ago. And these wars, as
Speaker 1: we've discussed in our previous episodes, are far from random
Speaker 1: thrashings of aunt brutality. Uh. These are wars that align
Speaker 1: with some of the same mathematics and tactics and principles
Speaker 1: that we see a play in human military history. And
Speaker 1: we have another example of this to consider, another interesting
Speaker 1: parallel that's drawn between the wars of ants and the
Speaker 1: wars of humans, and that is uh, the the the
Speaker 1: this thing that we refer to as ant tournaments or
Speaker 1: AUNT tournament sites. So for starters, you might need to
Speaker 1: dismiss whatever sort of Mortal Kombat scenario is entering your
Speaker 1: mind here at the thought of an ant tournament. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but don't worry, because the reality is much cooler than
Speaker 1: just like a single or double elimination tournament for ance. Uh.
Speaker 1: So here's the here's an example that MafA Eo will
Speaker 1: Sin and others bring up frequently, and that is honey
Speaker 1: pot ants. Now, these ants are astonishing creatures in their
Speaker 1: own right, even before you get to the tournament issue. Uh.
Speaker 1: Their their way of storing food is something that you
Speaker 1: must see for yourself. You you you should look up video
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah, because their name honey pot ants. Because
Speaker 1: what happens is the workers will the workers have the
Speaker 1: ability to gorge themselves unto their abdomens are enormously swelled
Speaker 1: and they look like little honey pots, uh, just filled
Speaker 1: with liquid food. So instead of storing excess food within
Speaker 1: a stash within the colony like a lot of ants do, uh,
Speaker 1: the honey pot ants store it within themselves in these
Speaker 1: little mobile depositories that are themselves and swollen workers that
Speaker 1: we call repleats. And then if if you're another aunt
Speaker 1: in the colony you need a little food, will you
Speaker 1: come up to one of the repletes uh? And I
Speaker 1: believe you, like you can touch their antenna and just
Speaker 1: the right way and they'll regurgitate up some food for you. Right,
Speaker 1: You you you you poke your estimate and it will
Speaker 1: barf up your dinner. Yeah, they're like little vending machines.
Speaker 1: Ah and I see you included a picture of this
Speaker 1: in our in our notes here for me to look at, Joe.
Speaker 1: They're wondrous, They're beautiful. They do look like little drugs.
Speaker 1: They're so swollen they look on droplets of honey or
Speaker 1: like extremely golden chickpeas their their back lid in this
Speaker 1: image that I've shared with Robert, and it makes their
Speaker 1: swollen abdomens look like bits of amber. Now, in addition
Speaker 1: to this, there are there are other wrinkles to their
Speaker 1: their peculiarity. So they're highly territorial. They frequently prey on
Speaker 1: foraging termites, and should two different groups of honeypot ants
Speaker 1: happen upon the same resource, a tournament begins to determine
Speaker 1: who shall claim it. So what happens is the workers
Speaker 1: from each colony circle around each other, standing up as
Speaker 1: high as possible on their legs. Behavior that biot is
Speaker 1: called stilting. So yes, what they're doing is they're trying
Speaker 1: to look as imposing as possible, as large as possible.
Speaker 1: And basically, the idea here seems to be that that
Speaker 1: that the larger colonies of honey pot ants tend to
Speaker 1: have larger individuals. So it's not only a show of
Speaker 1: immediate force, like hey, look how big we are to
Speaker 1: get away from our resources. It's also a show of
Speaker 1: what kind of backup forces you have to call in.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. So it's just like you can almost count
Speaker 1: on the fact that if if this ant is big,
Speaker 1: all of her buddies are big too. Yeah. It actually
Speaker 1: reminds me a little bit of the Imperial invasion of
Speaker 1: hot and the Empire strikes back with the deployment of
Speaker 1: those enormous A T eighties, which I recently saw described
Speaker 1: online as quote a giant impractical terror weapon. Absolutely, Why
Speaker 1: the legs? Why make your all terrain attack vehicles so
Speaker 1: vulnerable to a simple harpoon and tow cable? These these
Speaker 1: tall spindle legs make no sense. Well, yeah, if you
Speaker 1: think too hard about it. But as my my son
Speaker 1: was recently telling me, we were watching the Own War
Speaker 1: series and he said, you know, walkers are just always cool.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter which side they're on. They're just cool.
Speaker 1: And it's true. But but I think also you can
Speaker 1: look at it like, yes, it's a it's an impractical
Speaker 1: terror weapon. It sends a message, Hey, we're the Empire
Speaker 1: and we have resources on this scale at our disposal,
Speaker 1: so you'd best just abandoned the ice planet to us.
Speaker 1: And so that's what the weaker honeypot at force ends
Speaker 1: up doing this whole tournament. Uh practice limits the need
Speaker 1: for conflict and avoids the need for full scale and war.
Speaker 1: The smaller ant army flees, but much like the rebel alliance,
Speaker 1: they have to be darn sure that the forces there
Speaker 1: uh they're seeding to don't follow them and trace them
Speaker 1: to their primary base, because the larger honeypot force will
Speaker 1: attempt to do this and they will not hesitate to
Speaker 1: follow them back to their colony, decimate that colony, and
Speaker 1: then enslave the swollen repletes as their own food stores. Now,
Speaker 1: this is really interesting, the idea that they they make
Speaker 1: this display and try to make a calculation about whether
Speaker 1: it's worthwhile to fight. It's something that goes against the
Speaker 1: naive version of the nature red in tooth and claw
Speaker 1: idea that you know, animals are just always fighting and
Speaker 1: killing each other. It's always a violent struggle for survival.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you could quantify this, but my
Speaker 1: gut feeling is that the vast majority of conflicts in
Speaker 1: nature never come to violence. There are displays between animals
Speaker 1: and then one side backs down. Yeah, I believe we've
Speaker 1: talked about this before and discussing like animal weapons and
Speaker 1: animal violence. Is that, you know, how often does one
Speaker 1: animal outright kill another? You know it? I mean certainly
Speaker 1: in from predation, Yeah, apart from predation. Like the idea
Speaker 1: of two animals fighting to the death in a scenario
Speaker 1: where one is not trying to eat the other is
Speaker 1: is more of a rarity. But even so, It's like
Speaker 1: if you have a t rex and a triceratops, Like
Speaker 1: the t rex wants to kill the the triceratops in
Speaker 1: this scenario EO, but it of course does not want
Speaker 1: to be killed itself the you know, so it would
Speaker 1: potentially fight to the death. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: they try sterotops doesn't want to eat the t rex.
Speaker 1: It just wants to not be eaten by the t rex. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it just brings to mind the fact that
Speaker 1: animals they don't want to lose a conflict, but probably
Speaker 1: even more than that, they don't want to die, and
Speaker 1: so if if things are not looking like a like
Speaker 1: a pretty clear wind for them, they will very often
Speaker 1: just back down and try to get away. Now EO.
Speaker 1: Wilson and biologists Burnt a Whole Dobbler have have compared
Speaker 1: this tournament scenario to these symbolic battles and the Highlands
Speaker 1: of New Guinea, the initial phase of of of a
Speaker 1: battle or war in which the two sides square off
Speaker 1: at a distance, and what they'll do. Yeah, this so
Speaker 1: the scrap at a distance. They're not going to immediately,
Speaker 1: you know, rush into each other like some sort of
Speaker 1: brave heart scenario that's cinematic um trope that we all
Speaker 1: have grown so used to. Instead, they're gonna throw o spears.
Speaker 1: They're gonna fire arrows at each other, but with range
Speaker 1: in wooden shields in place, so there's actually like a
Speaker 1: a low possibility for fatality. And from here it might
Speaker 1: give way to a heated, closer battle, but the its
Speaker 1: aggressions might actually end right here. And this apparently is
Speaker 1: something that one sees throughout the history of human conflict,
Speaker 1: especially when it concerns smaller clans of fighters, because such
Speaker 1: groups like this simply don't have the resources to enter
Speaker 1: freely into a state of total warfare. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that state is more common, as we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: in in like larger empires, where you also have you know,
Speaker 1: the army that arrives on the battlefield also has the
Speaker 1: force of like a huge state behind it that will
Speaker 1: not let it walk away. It's a you know that
Speaker 1: that maybe the emperor back home is not going to
Speaker 1: be pleased if you see that this battle doesn't look
Speaker 1: good for you and decide it's better not to fight, Yes,
Speaker 1: you'll find that he's not as forgiving, right. So Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is obviously a smart strategy, and there's
Speaker 1: a reason humans do this and ants do this. It
Speaker 1: makes sense to try to avoid conflict if you can.
Speaker 1: I also can't help but wonder if there's a comparison
Speaker 1: to be made here. And this is just me, this
Speaker 1: is not any of these other commentators that I've read.
Speaker 1: They might have gotten into this, and maybe I just
Speaker 1: haven't read it, But I wonder if you can make
Speaker 1: a comparison here to the proxy wars between superpowers in
Speaker 1: the human world. You know, human cases in which each
Speaker 1: side certainly has immense resources, but in which case the
Speaker 1: destructive potential of atomic weaponry essentially reduces both sides to smaller,
Speaker 1: more vulnerable clans on their respective hillsides. There was something
Speaker 1: I was trying to look up because this also made
Speaker 1: me think of the at least epic literary tradition of
Speaker 1: the champion warfare. That is, you know that you read
Speaker 1: about it in the Iliad. It shows up actually in
Speaker 1: a lot of of ancient epics and stuff where armies
Speaker 1: will meet, but instead of you know, the whole armies
Speaker 1: clashing with one another, they will each select their greatest
Speaker 1: fighter and then those two will fight a duel that
Speaker 1: is supposed to, at least in some cases, symbolically settle
Speaker 1: the outcome of the fight. So I think of Hector
Speaker 1: versus Achilles, and I was looking for example. I was like,
Speaker 1: do aunts ever do this? So I was trying to
Speaker 1: find examples of champion warfare among ants, but I couldn't
Speaker 1: find anything. I don't know if you've come across anything
Speaker 1: like that, But if there were an example of something
Speaker 1: like that, that would be really interesting, that would man that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't read anything about that in the sources I
Speaker 1: was looking at it. I wonder how that would have
Speaker 1: something like that would evolve. You know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to imagine being a real state of affairs without
Speaker 1: I don't know, I guess symbolic thinking among I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe that is something that would be limited. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's even more than that. It seems like something that's
Speaker 1: more limited to epic poetry and storytelling than than happens
Speaker 1: in real life. Right. It kind of brings maybe it's
Speaker 1: the kind of story that makes the most sense for
Speaker 1: people that are so centered on the individual, you know,
Speaker 1: like here is the individual in the war, the individual
Speaker 1: that is changing the course of the battle, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing um, and it enables you to to take
Speaker 1: larger scenarios of battle that are more difficult to fathom
Speaker 1: and putting them in a one on one scenario, like
Speaker 1: in the last episode we were talking about the Lanchester
Speaker 1: square law. You know, we can you know, we can
Speaker 1: certainly imagine that in our head with forces of on
Speaker 1: one side versus the other. But then you can also
Speaker 1: put it in the scenario of David and Goliath, right,
Speaker 1: and there you instantly have this very individual based story
Speaker 1: of smaller force and larger force. Even though it tells
Speaker 1: it ultimately tells the story like if we were to
Speaker 1: take that and extrapolate it to just a smaller force
Speaker 1: against a larger force, uh per those laws we were discussing,
Speaker 1: that makes no sense. Like ultimately the the Goliath force
Speaker 1: is going to win unless they is some sort of
Speaker 1: crazy you know, outside context event, right or well, I
Speaker 1: mean it depends on conditions, right, because not all combat
Speaker 1: is equivalent. But yeah, generally, all right, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break. But when we
Speaker 1: come back, we will get into some of these specialized
Speaker 1: units of the ant war than all right, we're back, Robert.
Speaker 1: When you were a kid, did you get one of
Speaker 1: those Star Wars visual encyclopedias and just like a devour
Speaker 1: all of the different types of Star Wars stormtroopers that
Speaker 1: we never saw in the movies. Because in the movies
Speaker 1: you see the main storm troopers. You see the ones
Speaker 1: in the snow with like the big robes and capes.
Speaker 1: Almost I guess that's to keep warm or something. But
Speaker 1: then I remember reading about these other types that never
Speaker 1: show up in the movies, like lava troopers or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Did you never read about this? Uh No,
Speaker 1: I've never heard of lava troopers? Um? I mean, I'm trying,
Speaker 1: I'm only vaguely remembering, but it seemed very interesting to me.
Speaker 1: I was like, why isn't there a movie about that?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's drawing on the idea that, of course,
Speaker 1: you would have different types of specialized units for different terrain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I uh, Star Wars specific I never had that book,
Speaker 1: but certainly, just by virtue of being into like miniature
Speaker 1: war games and even even you know, plenty of games
Speaker 1: I don't play or collecting, I love to just pour
Speaker 1: over the army list, like, Okay, here are your here
Speaker 1: your ranking files, and okay, here your specialist. Here you're
Speaker 1: you're fast moving troops. Here are you're heavy troops. Here
Speaker 1: are you're infiltration units. Here you're close combat units. There's
Speaker 1: there's something, um yeah, just just endlessly appealing about about
Speaker 1: going through the rank and file of a system like that. Totally. Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course it shouldn't come as any surprise that
Speaker 1: many different kinds of ants have their own specialized units. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna discuss some of these. We're not gonna
Speaker 1: be of course, We're not gonna be able to really
Speaker 1: do justice to the entire rich diversity of the ant world,
Speaker 1: you know, plenty of which is still being discovered and
Speaker 1: is yet to be uh discovered by scientists. But we'll
Speaker 1: touch on some highlights here that are known. So first
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about specialized defenses. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, we've talked so much about offense with ants, uh,
Speaker 1: but but sometimes said there's this particular defensive strategy in
Speaker 1: mind as well. Zoologist and intomologist Shaun O'Donnell points out
Speaker 1: that leaf cutter ants and army ants are both dominant
Speaker 1: ants species, and when they wage war, those wars can
Speaker 1: wait for days. So it's a it's a classic matchup
Speaker 1: in many respects, right, It's a you know, ravaging warriors
Speaker 1: on one side and foraging agriculturists on the other. Right,
Speaker 1: So you would think of the army antsw is primarily
Speaker 1: like rating carnivores that are on the attack, and the
Speaker 1: leaf cutter ants are there their cultivators of their environment. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So leaf cutter ants most very famously depend on their workers.
Speaker 1: They have to go out, they have to cut the
Speaker 1: leaf portions, bring the leaf portions back, and then those
Speaker 1: leaf portions are used to grow their precious food crop,
Speaker 1: which is a fungus I believe, right, Yeah, fungus that
Speaker 1: is uh if I remember correctly extinct in the wild,
Speaker 1: is purely domesticated by ants long before humans came on
Speaker 1: the scene. Unbelievable. So it's mostly the work of these,
Speaker 1: you know, these female workers. But there they do have
Speaker 1: a cast of larger soldiers, and apparently they were something
Speaker 1: of a mystery for a while. Researchers would look at
Speaker 1: them and they would ask, what are these guys for.
Speaker 1: They don't seem to be doing anything, They don't seem
Speaker 1: to have a purpose. But by seating army and invasions
Speaker 1: in leaf cutter nests, researchers were able to discover that
Speaker 1: they seem to be specialists just for army ant invasions,
Speaker 1: sent to the front lines by the thousands, uh to
Speaker 1: in an attempt to defend the colony. Even though it
Speaker 1: does seem like they tend to fail in the end.
Speaker 1: But I mean, even in cases where they fail, it's
Speaker 1: possible they could be, say, buying time for the rest
Speaker 1: of the colony. Yeah, and it's interesting to look at that.
Speaker 1: That's that reality in terms of how other ant species
Speaker 1: deal with army ants, because apparently you very roughly you
Speaker 1: kind of have. You have two extremes. On one hand,
Speaker 1: those they just put up a fight. They're like army
Speaker 1: answer attacking, We're going to fight them back. We're gonna
Speaker 1: give it everything we have. But then you also have
Speaker 1: some varieties of ants that evacuate everybody at the first
Speaker 1: sign of an attack. The army answer coming, So pack
Speaker 1: it all up, we're getting out of here. But then
Speaker 1: they can move back in after the invaders have left
Speaker 1: because their army answer are not gonna live there. They're
Speaker 1: not gonna hang out in your colony and wait for
Speaker 1: you to come back. They're they're they're here for the goods,
Speaker 1: and if the goods are not here, they have to
Speaker 1: keep moving. Now here's another just super interesting adaptation. UM.
Speaker 1: In the last episode, I mentioned Douglas j Emlin's book
Speaker 1: Animal Weapons, which deals with the evolution of bioweapons and
Speaker 1: organisms as well as the development of tool based weapons
Speaker 1: and humans. And he discusses the feodole and genus in
Speaker 1: which individuals fall into various casts. So there, of course
Speaker 1: the reproductive male and females. They're the small workers, they're
Speaker 1: larger workers. And then there are the soldiers and the
Speaker 1: soldiers of this genus boast quote grossly enlarged heads, jaws,
Speaker 1: and teeth. Okay, these are these A particular ants are
Speaker 1: also known as the big headed ants. But then he
Speaker 1: also goes on to discuss another genus of ants. This
Speaker 1: is Odonto Marcus, the trap jaw ants, whose lock and
Speaker 1: release jaw structure functions a lot like a mantis shrimp.
Speaker 1: You know, there's all this stored potential energy like a
Speaker 1: crossbow that has been pulled back and locked. So when
Speaker 1: these jaws shut on these trap jaw ants, they can
Speaker 1: shut its speeds a one hundred and forty three miles
Speaker 1: per hour, so they slam shut really fast. Right, And
Speaker 1: here's where it gets That was a stupid restatement of
Speaker 1: what you said. But let's keep it. Yes, very very fast,
Speaker 1: especially on this scale too. Right. Um. But but here's
Speaker 1: where he gets even more in raising. This is where
Speaker 1: he gets kind of cunning because the trap jaw ants,
Speaker 1: of course, they can release this bite at their adversaries,
Speaker 1: but they can also unleashed this bite at the ground
Speaker 1: and in doing so, launch themselves backwards through the air
Speaker 1: twenty body lengths as a successful escape tactic. Wow. So
Speaker 1: this reminds me of indungeons and dragons. There's this ability
Speaker 1: that rogues have called the cunning action ability that allows
Speaker 1: them to effectively disengage in backtrack out of battle, so
Speaker 1: they're able to strike at an enemy and then get
Speaker 1: out of there really quick, so the enemy can't smite
Speaker 1: them back the next round. Um. Yeah, yeah, it's so
Speaker 1: it's it's crazy to think. It's almost like they have
Speaker 1: jet packs these ants. Yeah. I was trying to think
Speaker 1: of what a what a human technological comparison would be.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about, like, I guess escape pods or
Speaker 1: ejector seats from fighter planes, or or just like maybe
Speaker 1: like it's kind of like a sky hook. Maybe a
Speaker 1: plane flies over just picks you up. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't even know if there is truly a direct because
Speaker 1: when we're when we're talking about retreat and effectively, you know,
Speaker 1: backing your forces out in a military scenario. I mean generally,
Speaker 1: it's a very delicate situation with with with human military forces.
Speaker 1: I can't think of anything offhand it seems like a
Speaker 1: direct parallel to this. Now, a lot of ants boast
Speaker 1: chemical weapons. We touched on this in the very first
Speaker 1: episode where we talked about the basic evolution of ants,
Speaker 1: in which early on it seems like you had more
Speaker 1: like powerful stings that were aimed at large, for instance,
Speaker 1: vertebrate threats to the ants. But then the the evolutionary
Speaker 1: pressure becomes more focused on UH and warfare, and there
Speaker 1: so therefore you see all these various um adaptations emerge
Speaker 1: where it's more about waging war against ants, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it takes place of new chemical weapons that they may use.
Speaker 1: So a very famous one, of course would be formic acid.
Speaker 1: The word formic coming from the word for ants formic
Speaker 1: to day, yeah, and so that's what we see with
Speaker 1: the formic acid of the form maica would ants. So
Speaker 1: these ants can spray formic acid from the tips of
Speaker 1: their abdomen. In fact, formic acid was first extracted in
Speaker 1: sixteen seventy one by the English naturalist John Ray. Is
Speaker 1: John Ray, the guy we talked about who was doing
Speaker 1: the experiments with with ants and formic acid and was
Speaker 1: comparing it to urine. I don't think it is. I
Speaker 1: had to pull him up and granted a lot of
Speaker 1: these individuals with portraits from from the late seventeenth early
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, UH kind of look the same to me.
Speaker 1: But um, I don't think we touched on him before,
Speaker 1: could be wrong, but anyway, the formic acid of these
Speaker 1: ants that this is a great example of one variety
Speaker 1: of of reriverally in and of itself amazing chemical weapons
Speaker 1: that have been developed by that have evolved in these
Speaker 1: ant species. But there are even more exotic examples to
Speaker 1: look at. And in this we're getting into the topic
Speaker 1: of exploding ants, which this is so good. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is a lot of you probably heard about about
Speaker 1: examples of this before because I mean, it's just such
Speaker 1: an amazing topic and it's certainly made the rounds in
Speaker 1: science communication and science journalism. Uh and in fact, I
Speaker 1: think we've probably mentioned it on the show in the past. However,
Speaker 1: we're going to touch on some new stuff as well here,
Speaker 1: like the new findings new species that have been discovered
Speaker 1: just in the last year or so. So um. Well,
Speaker 1: one and one example that comes up a lot is
Speaker 1: uh campan nautists sunders of Malaysia and Brunei, whose bodies
Speaker 1: are riddled with poison sacks and so when they attack.
Speaker 1: When they're attacked, they constrict and rupture fatally, forcing sticky
Speaker 1: poison out of their mouth anous and through their exoskeleton.
Speaker 1: And again, don't think of this as of the individual
Speaker 1: in this scenario, think of the group. Think of the colony,
Speaker 1: the good of the colony. So this is a situation
Speaker 1: where the individual is a biological weapon and they can
Speaker 1: readily sacrifice themselves to do damage against or in some
Speaker 1: way slow down an invading species. Yeah. I mean again,
Speaker 1: think of the colony as an organism. So this is
Speaker 1: sort of like an animal with poison skin. The ant
Speaker 1: is sort of like the skin of the poison arrow frog, right,
Speaker 1: And but in this case they can they can like
Speaker 1: bear down and burst themselves like a like a like
Speaker 1: a cooked sausage, you know, uh, like like a gusher, Yeah,
Speaker 1: poison gush exactly. This is called autopsis, and it's involved
Speaker 1: independently in a number of termite species as well. But
Speaker 1: but you see different varieties of it. The kind of
Speaker 1: shed light on how this seems to have evolved. So
Speaker 1: sometimes you'll have an autopsis utilizing species. It simply defecates
Speaker 1: on their enemies get too close, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: poop onto you. Other times you see it more a
Speaker 1: situation where they're they're bearing down, like they're pooping so
Speaker 1: hard that they're going to rupture their abdomen. And from
Speaker 1: this we get into sort of more exaggerated modes of
Speaker 1: just absolute abdominal m explosion. And in fact, like IM said,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a nice new example of this that's
Speaker 1: come out. I was just reading in April establishments published
Speaker 1: in zoo Keys via Lassity at All about another variety
Speaker 1: of exploding at known as uh Colobopsis explodings explodons. I
Speaker 1: love this exploding a k a. Yellow do ats, but
Speaker 1: we're just gonna call him explodings because that's that's clearly
Speaker 1: where the fun is. So this is a wonderfully fascinating
Speaker 1: species because minor workers in the colony have this exploding ability. Uh.
Speaker 1: They can burst themselves into this yellow chemical goo that
Speaker 1: is kind of like a spice that you know, again
Speaker 1: will kill or slow down or or aggravate damage an invader.
Speaker 1: But then they also have um have these larger major
Speaker 1: type workers and they're referred to as door keepers because
Speaker 1: they have quote big plug shaped heads which they use
Speaker 1: to block intruders in the tunnels. Pause to appreciate this
Speaker 1: for a moment. So this is something that other species
Speaker 1: of ant have have a version of this two specialized
Speaker 1: members that essentially have a locked door four ahead. It's like,
Speaker 1: this is a fascinating biomechanical way to raise the drawbridge
Speaker 1: on your colony. Right, These would be ants that have dug,
Speaker 1: you know, excavated colonies with tunnels, and the ants themselves
Speaker 1: to become part of the defensive structure by closing the
Speaker 1: entrances of the tunnels with their heads. Yeah, this is amazing.
Speaker 1: I'll also point out I believe there's another variety of
Speaker 1: ant that seals its entrances with stones, and we'll get
Speaker 1: into some stone examples here in a bet, But I
Speaker 1: want to get back to explode and stuff. So this
Speaker 1: is a particularly elegant adaptation for defense, but it also,
Speaker 1: at least on the surface, seems to buck the trend
Speaker 1: we see earlier with marauder ants. For the marauders, the
Speaker 1: majors are the big guns. They're the A, T. S.
Speaker 1: D s that move into tear apart enemies that have
Speaker 1: been bogged down amid the individually less impressive miners. For explodons,
Speaker 1: the majors are the plug heads, so they function mostly
Speaker 1: as barricade engines. Perhaps, you know, one could make a
Speaker 1: loose comparison to like a mobile field generator in Star
Speaker 1: Wars or something. And with explodings, the majors rarely leave
Speaker 1: the nest. They're they're purely domestic defenses. It's the miners, however,
Speaker 1: that packed the explosive punch that are that are self detonating, uh,
Speaker 1: sacrificing themselves, ending their lives in an attempt to strike
Speaker 1: out against the invaders. So these are literally suicide missions. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like what apparently will happen is um like with the
Speaker 1: marauder miners, the explodings miners are indeed the first wave.
Speaker 1: So there's an attack on the nest, then they pour
Speaker 1: into battle, they latch onto an enemy with their mandibles,
Speaker 1: and then they hold their abdomen close to their grappled enemy.
Speaker 1: Then they air down and they burst loosing out of
Speaker 1: a thick spiced yellow goo that again either kills them
Speaker 1: or hinders the attacker. Wow. And then again Marauder style,
Speaker 1: the explodents majors burst in with their plug heads to
Speaker 1: barricade the tunnels against increased invasion. And I guess one
Speaker 1: of the interesting things to think about here is that
Speaker 1: we're really getting into a whole specialized realm evant warfare,
Speaker 1: defensive warfare fought within the nest um, you know, defensive
Speaker 1: urban warfare. UH specialists here tunnel warfare specialists, which is
Speaker 1: something of course we see tunnel warfare and urban warfare
Speaker 1: in human scenarios. And it makes me think back to
Speaker 1: the linear a Lanchester's linear loft that we discussed in
Speaker 1: the last episode. Yeah, again as a refresher, the linear
Speaker 1: law tends to apply more to UH conflicts that are
Speaker 1: close something closer to a series of sequential duels, where
Speaker 1: a force with larger numbers can't use the square power
Speaker 1: of those larger numbers to easily overwhelm smaller forces. UH.
Speaker 1: You use defenses to your advantage to try to limit
Speaker 1: the scope of how much battle can take place at
Speaker 1: the same time. And a classic way to do this
Speaker 1: is to create choke points, to create tunnels. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so this species would seem a master at chuckpoints. So
Speaker 1: you're you're pouring into their UH to their home and
Speaker 1: you've got, you know, hundreds of of soldier ants that
Speaker 1: their at their disposal. Like they have numbers on their side,
Speaker 1: but they have specialists that can explode UH and a
Speaker 1: specialists that can seal off the tunnel. Uh so, which
Speaker 1: it gives seems to give them, uh you know, more
Speaker 1: or less equal footing with the invaders. And I want
Speaker 1: to stress again that explode Us is a newly discovered
Speaker 1: variety of self sacrificing ant, first written about in and
Speaker 1: so more remains to be explored about them. But also
Speaker 1: in general, it just drives home how many aunt species
Speaker 1: are out there in the world that we just that
Speaker 1: we haven't fully documented yet, how many, how many strange
Speaker 1: and wonderful adaptations are out there, they just simply haven't
Speaker 1: been chronicled yet. Isn't that amazing just just to know
Speaker 1: that there's so much more to learn that will be
Speaker 1: things like this, Just bizarre, amazing adaptations that already exist.
Speaker 1: It's not like they're gonna come into being in the future.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously new species will come into being. They're
Speaker 1: already out there. We just never looked at them before,
Speaker 1: never at least never documented them in a in a
Speaker 1: thorough way. Absolutely all right, on that note, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take one last break, but when we come back, we'll
Speaker 1: discuss the Stone Age tactics of bicolor ants. Than alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So the next variety of and I want
Speaker 1: to touch on is the Dorry Meyer mix bicolor ants.
Speaker 1: So if you have the higher ground, you know all
Speaker 1: you need is gravity and mass. Right, soldiers can defend
Speaker 1: cliffs or the walls of a castle by dropping stones
Speaker 1: on the heads of attackers. But of course you can
Speaker 1: also go on the offense, particularly via the technologies and
Speaker 1: the human in realm of bombardment, an enemy might drop
Speaker 1: things such as stones, bodies, or explosives upon an enemy city. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the human realm. I mean, one way you can
Speaker 1: think about the evolution of an air force is that
Speaker 1: it is a It is a force evolved to give
Speaker 1: you permanent high ground. Uh. And sometimes ants can definitely
Speaker 1: take advantage of this. In particular, these dory miromix by
Speaker 1: color ants of Arizona Um previously known as Cono Mirma
Speaker 1: by color ants. They were discovered back in ninety nine
Speaker 1: by Moglik and Alpert to actually use small stones to
Speaker 1: drop um on their adversaries, basically ant tool use. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess when you think about aunt tool use,
Speaker 1: you do have to like take a step back and
Speaker 1: think about what ants are always doing their manipulating uh,
Speaker 1: the soil they're manipulating little grains of sand and moving
Speaker 1: them around, and this is just kind of a byproduct
Speaker 1: of that. What are else are you doing with those
Speaker 1: pieces of the ground. So basically, the researchers back in
Speaker 1: seventy nine observed that workers surrounding the nest would pick
Speaker 1: up small stones and other objects and drop them down
Speaker 1: the nest entrances of rival nests that we're you know,
Speaker 1: reasonably close by. Now, comparing it to bombardment might be
Speaker 1: a bit much, but it is at the very least
Speaker 1: active interference in a competitors industry. So so perhaps one
Speaker 1: might think of it more as like industrial sabotage. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I mean, it's it seems like that would
Speaker 1: sort of counting me. It's using gravity and high ground
Speaker 1: to your advantage in the attack on the enemy's infrastructure.
Speaker 1: So in many ways, it seems a lot like bombing
Speaker 1: or shelling. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think you could
Speaker 1: make an argument for it. Again, going back to our
Speaker 1: first episode, nothing in the ant world is gonna be
Speaker 1: one to one right with the human world. But uh,
Speaker 1: like Moffatt said, you know, good comparisons, you know, worthy
Speaker 1: comparisons are not going to be a direct one to once,
Speaker 1: but there are a few other possible cases of soil
Speaker 1: and pebble based tool used by ants um which again
Speaker 1: shouldn't be really all that surprising given their intense manipulation
Speaker 1: of the Earth. Four sixty five paper from Line at
Speaker 1: All reported pavement ants using soil to attack bees and
Speaker 1: the desert harvester. Ant will apparently drop bits of soil
Speaker 1: into honey water and then carry the soil particles back
Speaker 1: as a way to bring the honey water to the nest.
Speaker 1: This was this was via a study conducting eighty four
Speaker 1: by Philip McDonald of the New York Intomological Society, and
Speaker 1: it seems to be related to the similar use of
Speaker 1: of soil to cover up liquids that ants cannot just
Speaker 1: outright remove. Okay, so the idea here is that you
Speaker 1: come across a liquid food source that you want to
Speaker 1: bring back to the nest. You obviously you can't hairy
Speaker 1: liquid the same way you could carry like a part
Speaker 1: of another insects body back is food, So they will
Speaker 1: pour like soil into the liquid to create a sponge
Speaker 1: full of sugar, and then carry that soil sponge The
Speaker 1: sugary soil sponge back towards the queen. That seems to
Speaker 1: be the case here. Now uh, it's it's possible that
Speaker 1: this is something that more is obvious in experimental scenarios.
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely certain on that, but it it certainly
Speaker 1: underlines like what is possible using the properties of soil
Speaker 1: at that scale. And again, it seems like the more
Speaker 1: u uh usual activity that you see is like there's
Speaker 1: some sort of sail poison or a chemical and the
Speaker 1: ants don't know what to do with that. They can't
Speaker 1: really interact with it directly, but they can put soil
Speaker 1: on it. They can essentially bury it. They can cover
Speaker 1: it up right, like kicking soil onto a smoldering camp
Speaker 1: fire or something. Yeah. So yeah, I would imagine that
Speaker 1: these studies alleging some form of ant tool use, like
Speaker 1: most of the are these alleging types of tool use
Speaker 1: and animals probably have encountered some dispute, you know, about
Speaker 1: interpretation of the behaviors. U It seems like that always
Speaker 1: comes up. Now here's another one that's pretty interesting. This
Speaker 1: is an example brought up by Moffatt concerning the so
Speaker 1: called slave maker ants. So slave making is also known
Speaker 1: is duosis in the biology world. So these are cases
Speaker 1: where you'll have ants that are brood parasites that in
Speaker 1: some species rely on the practice absolutely, but another species
Speaker 1: are not obligate slave makers. So basically what they do
Speaker 1: is they invade a colony, they capture the brood of
Speaker 1: another ant. Usually they're capturing the young, and generally it
Speaker 1: is a very specific species that they're focusing on, and
Speaker 1: then they bring those young back to their own nest
Speaker 1: where they're made to work, while members of the slave
Speaker 1: maker species itself just focus on rating more nests for
Speaker 1: more workers. Now, moffat ship Ar is that while slave
Speaker 1: making ants are generally heavily armored, heavily armed with superior
Speaker 1: fighting abilities, some species use a propaganda chemical uh is
Speaker 1: the is the term he uses to throw off the
Speaker 1: enemy during raids. Uh So you have to think about this, right,
Speaker 1: You may be big and strong, but it goes back
Speaker 1: to that linear law that if you're going in to
Speaker 1: invade a colony, if you're gonna go into the thick
Speaker 1: of it, then great armor, great weapons, that's only gonna
Speaker 1: get you so far if you're outnumbered. But if you
Speaker 1: have some sort of chemical advantage, if you're able to
Speaker 1: trick the others into thinking you're supposed to be there,
Speaker 1: then do you have an enormous advantage, doesn't matter about
Speaker 1: their superior numbers. And so in these cases, these propaganda
Speaker 1: chemical using slave maker ants, they can often carry all
Speaker 1: of this out without any fighting or killing taking place.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not just forms of rival ants there.
Speaker 1: It almost seems like there is a whole genre across
Speaker 1: different types of animals that's just adaptations for the safe
Speaker 1: infiltration of ant colonies. Yeah, Mermica phile. So the the
Speaker 1: whole classification of animals that have have come to depend
Speaker 1: upon the ants, and in many cases you use some
Speaker 1: sort of chemical signal to trick the colony into thinking
Speaker 1: they're supposed to be there. Now here's another example just
Speaker 1: of of general sort of ant war um strategies that
Speaker 1: is that has brought up off It brings this one
Speaker 1: up as well. Uh, we've ants, so we've answered not
Speaker 1: merely an army on the move, but they hold and
Speaker 1: control territory. They spread their workers out across it and
Speaker 1: then focus resources around key choke points. They even established
Speaker 1: leafy barrack nests in the crowns of trees and Moffitt
Speaker 1: points out that that we've answered therefore less rigid compared
Speaker 1: to army ants quote. Weavers, in contrast, wander more freely
Speaker 1: and are more versatile in their response to opportunities and threats.
Speaker 1: The difference in style calls to mind the contrast between
Speaker 1: the rigidity of Frederick the Great's armies and the flexibility
Speaker 1: and mobility of Napoleon bonaparte troops. That's interesting. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: so the idea is that if a weaver aunt does
Speaker 1: encounter a problem in the empire, he uses a recruitment
Speaker 1: pheromone to call in reinforcements from the immediate area, as
Speaker 1: opposed to just having like one war gang ravaging around
Speaker 1: the territory. So, again, these are not This is not
Speaker 1: an attempt to create an exhaustive list of all the
Speaker 1: amazing adaptations that ants have developed to wage wars against
Speaker 1: each other defend against each other, but hopefully it helps
Speaker 1: provide uh more of an idea of the rich diversity
Speaker 1: out there. This is one of my favorite types of
Speaker 1: topics that that frequently comes up on the show. It's
Speaker 1: one of those where you feel like you've gotten just
Speaker 1: a tiny glimpse, you know, behind through through a curtain
Speaker 1: or through a window into a vast uh you know,
Speaker 1: mansion possibilities and and and rich relationships. Uh, that that
Speaker 1: you don't even think about most of your waking hours,
Speaker 1: that you know that the world is just shocking. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and um and I think it's really interesting to look
Speaker 1: at the work of of you know, Wilson, Moffatt, uh
Speaker 1: and others when they compare ants to the human world,
Speaker 1: because on one hand, it helps us better understand the ants, right,
Speaker 1: you know, that's how humans work. Like if we can
Speaker 1: see ourselves reflected to some degree and another organism, then
Speaker 1: we can understand that organism better, even if it's you know,
Speaker 1: we're kind of anthropomorphizing to get there. But then on
Speaker 1: the other hand, it does seem like we potentially have
Speaker 1: a lot to learn about what we are, right, we're
Speaker 1: getting into, you know, the sociobiology of V. O. Wilson
Speaker 1: or can or you know, certainly Moffatt gets into this
Speaker 1: a lot in his book The Human Swarm, where he's
Speaker 1: he's he's not just looking at the ant world, he's
Speaker 1: he's moving from there into the human world and trying
Speaker 1: to make sense of what we're doing. Yeah, and of course,
Speaker 1: you know, we're we're incredibly different creatures than ants, but
Speaker 1: some of the same resource dynamics and things like that
Speaker 1: are always going to be in play no matter what
Speaker 1: species you're talking about. Yeah. In that E. O. Wilson documentary,
Speaker 1: I believe he shares this quote. Uh, he says, quote
Speaker 1: the real problem of humanity is the following. We have
Speaker 1: paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology, and it is
Speaker 1: terrifyingly dangerous and it is now approaching a point of
Speaker 1: crisis overall. I think in many ways that's true, and
Speaker 1: it brings to mind. You know, something that's been sort
Speaker 1: of simmering for me throughout these episodes is that what
Speaker 1: I would hope we could learn by by looking at
Speaker 1: the warfare of other organized species like you social insects,
Speaker 1: and uh comparing that to to get perspective on human
Speaker 1: life is not that we learn how better to wage
Speaker 1: war through it, but maybe how not to wage war
Speaker 1: and how to avoid war. Yeah. Yeah, there's the sort
Speaker 1: of the lesson that we don't need to live like ants. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, because ants, for all the comparisons we've made,
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're free of these human burdens that
Speaker 1: we mentioned, you know, they're emotionless. There, their ways, while
Speaker 1: comparable to human institutions, in some way, are free of
Speaker 1: institutional constraints. Well, Robert, while I agree with you in
Speaker 1: a sense about that, though I would I would be
Speaker 1: careful about the idea that they're emotionless given our well true, yes,
Speaker 1: our our invertebrate emotions episode. But yeah, we we don't know.
Speaker 1: We don't think that they have complex inner lives the
Speaker 1: way that we do, even though they have these internal
Speaker 1: states that you could probably recognize as being something like
Speaker 1: fear or joy, possibly, right, Yeah, I mean, I I
Speaker 1: think I have heard before I forget who there was
Speaker 1: an entomology. I don't think it was Wilson Um. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was Moffitt and an MPR piece talking about the
Speaker 1: watching ants and feeling that some ants had almost a personality.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you're you're correct. I shouldn't be too fast
Speaker 1: to dismiss them as emotionless. Though an individual ant soldier
Speaker 1: is well far I think, far less of an individual
Speaker 1: than a than a human. I think we can we
Speaker 1: can at least focus on that, um and then in
Speaker 1: terms of like what they can do, I mean, certainly
Speaker 1: they are a powerful force within the ecosystem. It's been
Speaker 1: observed that if all humans died today, ants would proceed
Speaker 1: just fine, But if all the ants died, the world
Speaker 1: would be in a state of absolute chaos. All right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and close it out right there.
Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this three part look at ant warfare.
Speaker 1: But obviously there's so so much in the ant world.
Speaker 1: We can easily return, probably will return at some point
Speaker 1: in the future to discuss ants once more, especially as
Speaker 1: researchers continue to make new discoveries. Totally in the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you would like to check out other episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find us wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to be.
Speaker 1: We just asked that you rate, review, and subscribe. You
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listening to your favorite shows. B