Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Stuff to Blow Your Mind Podcast.
Speaker 1: My name is Joe McCormick. Today we had originally planned
Speaker 1: to have an all new interview for you, but due
Speaker 1: to some holiday scheduling mayhem, that had to be delayed.
Speaker 1: So instead the door is creaking open and we're going
Speaker 1: down down into the vault to bring you an episode
Speaker 1: of Yesteryear. This episode originally aired January, and it is
Speaker 1: about allegations that ants, as in the insect, build structures
Speaker 1: that could be called traps. Please enjoy Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: are you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind? My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today
Speaker 1: we're to be talking about traps. I think I've mentioned
Speaker 1: this in some Weird House Cinema episodes, but for some reason,
Speaker 1: ever since I was a little kid, I have always
Speaker 1: loved movie scenes where the protagonists build a trap to
Speaker 1: use against the villain or the monster. I remember like
Speaker 1: Home Alone when I was a little kid, that that
Speaker 1: that whole sequence was great. It sort of expands to
Speaker 1: fill my whole childhood impression of what the movie was.
Speaker 1: And if you go back and watch it as an adult.
Speaker 1: It's kind of weird that it's only like fifteen or
Speaker 1: twenty minutes of the runtime in In Home Alone. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it does seem like that's the main thing. I remember
Speaker 1: the traps, the traps, and and certainly people feel certain
Speaker 1: nostalgia for them. My heart swells at the thought of
Speaker 1: a nail going into Daniel Stearn's foot. Um. But but
Speaker 1: also yeah, I remember other ones, like you know, Arnold
Speaker 1: Schwarzenegger builds a bunch of traps in Predator um. And
Speaker 1: but like this wasn't just when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: It's still works on me. I remember there was a
Speaker 1: sequence I just loved in the more recent horror movie
Speaker 1: It follows where the characters build a trap for the monster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. They that is very They have a very,
Speaker 1: very much a kind of Home Alone's set up that
Speaker 1: they do there, because it's not only the heroes that
Speaker 1: that have traps. I always love a good villain trap
Speaker 1: as well, especially the trap door. Um. The trap door
Speaker 1: sequence is always a lot of fun. Um uh you know,
Speaker 1: be it something like in in Lynn Labyrinth. I love
Speaker 1: the trap when the trap door springs on our hero
Speaker 1: and that. But actually Tomorrow's Weird House Cinema also has
Speaker 1: a fun trap door sequence. Oh yeah, so look forward
Speaker 1: to that. Well yeah, on the side of the protagonists
Speaker 1: getting through trap set for them. Another one of my
Speaker 1: favorite movie sequences as a child was the beginning of
Speaker 1: Raiders the Lost Art. Oh yeah, and when Indies going
Speaker 1: through all the traps, something about it is just like,
Speaker 1: deep in the brain, it's very satisfying. Wall to wall traps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a great sequence as well. Um, and all
Speaker 1: of these are great sequences in spite of the fact
Speaker 1: that when you when you can, when you really think
Speaker 1: long and hard about any of these scenarios, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the cracks definitely show would would all of these traps
Speaker 1: still be working in this ancient ruin that Indiana Jones
Speaker 1: finds himself in. I don't know, It's it's a hard
Speaker 1: argument to make there, right, How did the spring trap
Speaker 1: operate by you sticking your hand through a shaft of
Speaker 1: light when it was made like thousands of years ago? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Or you know, if it's Duke and predator, like, how
Speaker 1: does he, um, how does he make this super powerful
Speaker 1: compound bow just in the space of a few hours
Speaker 1: on an afternoon in the jungle. That's just standard survival training.
Speaker 1: And all these other various ewok traps that he builds.
Speaker 1: Didn't didn't you go to that camp? Did I build
Speaker 1: a bow like that at a cat camp? Now? I
Speaker 1: think we sharpened sticks, you know, that would be that
Speaker 1: would be more believable. Right, he makes a spear to battle.
Speaker 1: That's most of the way there. But you know, I
Speaker 1: think it probably speaks volumes for humans to be, you know,
Speaker 1: to be saying all of this about traps and especially
Speaker 1: about you know, loving these cinematic treatments of traps, because
Speaker 1: because what are traps? Ultimately, very broadly speaking, they're clever,
Speaker 1: tactical and or technological innovations that level the playing field
Speaker 1: against predators, against prey, and even against fellow humans. Traps
Speaker 1: are the sort of things that humans have been up
Speaker 1: to since prehistory. So of course we love traps, and
Speaker 1: of course we admire things like traps that we find
Speaker 1: another species. Right, So today we're going to be focusing
Speaker 1: on some allegations of insects with the ability to build traps,
Speaker 1: specifically ants that do things that may in fact be
Speaker 1: biological evolutions that allow them to trap prey. Now, there
Speaker 1: are some other animals that I think we could say
Speaker 1: more more clearly and and famously create traps. I think
Speaker 1: the obvious uh example here would be spiders. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: spiders are the trap builders par excellence. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: there are no finer trap builders in the animal kingdom.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could make a case for human beings, um,
Speaker 1: but personally I'm not in favor of that. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, well, web building spiders especially are just such
Speaker 1: highly evolved trap masters. Every detail of their anatomy and
Speaker 1: behavior enhances their trapping ability, and the trap is very
Speaker 1: much an extension of their own bodies in so many ways.
Speaker 1: And we've covered this, and we've covered spiders in general
Speaker 1: numerous times in the show before, and we'll likely keep
Speaker 1: coming back to them. But yeah, that the spider, the
Speaker 1: spider is the trap maker. There's nothing else that the
Speaker 1: spider really does. Um In anything else it does, the
Speaker 1: web building spider is going to do in close proximity
Speaker 1: to the web that it has built. Yeah. Another example
Speaker 1: that's come up before, I think in our Sarlac episodes
Speaker 1: was the ant lion. Yes. Yeah, uh, this is a
Speaker 1: case where we have predatory larvae that in some species
Speaker 1: of antline anyway, set up at the bottom of sand
Speaker 1: pits that they dig, ready to lash out at anything
Speaker 1: that disturbs their grains, and you know, ventured down into
Speaker 1: the trap. Um. Again, not all ant lion species dig
Speaker 1: trap pits, but some of the most famous ones do.
Speaker 1: I remember. One of the great things we learned about
Speaker 1: the ant lion was that, like you say, the it
Speaker 1: is the ones that make traps. It is just the
Speaker 1: larval period of their lifespan, their life cycle that they
Speaker 1: make the traps. Then they later metamorphosed into into another form.
Speaker 1: But while they're in that larval stage, I think at
Speaker 1: least some of them never poop. So yeah, catching ants
Speaker 1: and eating them and just like waiting and it's like
Speaker 1: if you had to wait until you turned eighteen to poop.
Speaker 1: We'll go back and listen to that Sarlac episode if
Speaker 1: you'd like to hear more about the ant lion. There's
Speaker 1: also um the species of creat known as the worm lion,
Speaker 1: and this is this is unrelated to the ant lion.
Speaker 1: It's just a matter of convergent evolution that ends up
Speaker 1: utilizing largely the exact same method again when it's a larva.
Speaker 1: Uh though, the pit itself in this case is generated
Speaker 1: via site a slightly different method, so it digs its
Speaker 1: pit in a slightly different method, but it it's still
Speaker 1: consumes its prey in the same manner. But for me,
Speaker 1: at least, if you ask me to make a list
Speaker 1: of non human animals that make traps, I could obviously
Speaker 1: go spiders. I would have thought of the ant lion,
Speaker 1: maybe by association the worm lion. But there before I
Speaker 1: was reading up for this episode, I think I would
Speaker 1: have drawn a blank. I wouldn't know what to go
Speaker 1: to next. Yeah, and part of it comes down to
Speaker 1: just how are you going to going to define a trap? Uh?
Speaker 1: For example, here's here's an interesting potential example. Uh. We
Speaker 1: can discuss that I read across read read about when
Speaker 1: I was reading Gilbert Walled Bowlers How Not to Be Eaten,
Speaker 1: which which is largely about insects. But there's a part
Speaker 1: where the author is discussing the burrowing owl. So these
Speaker 1: are small birds native to the Great Plains in southern Florida. Um,
Speaker 1: I think they're about the size of for robin. I'm
Speaker 1: to understand that. You know, they're small, little little guys,
Speaker 1: but they make their home and burrows that they did themselves.
Speaker 1: And one of the interesting things that they do in
Speaker 1: addition to this, if this wasn't you know interesting enough already,
Speaker 1: is the burrowing owl will scatter horse or cow dung
Speaker 1: around the entrance to their burrows. And in you know,
Speaker 1: times before European contact, this would have probably been bison dung.
Speaker 1: And the dung does seem to be important because if
Speaker 1: if researchers remove the dung from the vicinity, the birds
Speaker 1: will just the bird will just go out and obtain
Speaker 1: more dung and place it in the vicinity. Uh So
Speaker 1: it's it seems to be doing this intentionally. The theory
Speaker 1: is that they place the dung to bait dung beetles,
Speaker 1: So they put the dung out, dung beetles come, and
Speaker 1: indeed researchers have been able to tell that the owls
Speaker 1: eat ten times more dung beetles than usual when the
Speaker 1: dung is out. Well, this will in fact mirror one
Speaker 1: of the two examples of potential ant trap making that
Speaker 1: I want to talk about later. Yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: but but this is a great example. It's certainly clever.
Speaker 1: I like it, but it kind of forces us to
Speaker 1: ask the question of a trap, like what is a trap?
Speaker 1: Is just merely baiting a trap? Um? That is a
Speaker 1: good question, yeah, because and um, how much does the
Speaker 1: trap structure have to be separate from your body in
Speaker 1: order wount as a as a constructed trap? And how
Speaker 1: much does it have to how much work does it
Speaker 1: have to do for you? Yeah? And at what point
Speaker 1: does an animal's behavior stop being a trap and just
Speaker 1: become sneaky behavior, sneaky tactics, or or simply ambush predation,
Speaker 1: Because obviously there are plenty of example as of ambush
Speaker 1: predators on land and in the sea, and these include
Speaker 1: everything from well, the trap door spider for one, which
Speaker 1: I think is is definitely a case of of trap
Speaker 1: building because it's it's an ambush predator, but it builds
Speaker 1: a silk hinge trap door to aid in those ambushes, right,
Speaker 1: so the trapdoor hides it. I think you could count
Speaker 1: that as like infrastructure necessary to constitute a trap. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that, Yeah, definitely with the trapdoor spider. But
Speaker 1: then you also have just various camouflage predators, including things
Speaker 1: like frog fish, praying mantis is, chameleons, and more, which
Speaker 1: are not building anything. They're not altering their environment. But
Speaker 1: they've evolved to look like a part of their environment. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they have, you know, often tremendous abilities of camouflage
Speaker 1: then enable them to quickly ambush something that they want
Speaker 1: to eat. Okay, that probably doesn't That doesn't really seem
Speaker 1: like a trap to me, because they're just evolved to
Speaker 1: look that way and they do the actual hunting themselves, right.
Speaker 1: And then of course we have various birds and cats
Speaker 1: and big cats even, uh, that are just very stealthy,
Speaker 1: that are just very good at not being observed by
Speaker 1: the things they want to kill. So I was reading
Speaker 1: a little bit about this in Douglas j Imland's excellent
Speaker 1: book Animal Weapons that have referenced on the show before,
Speaker 1: and he points out that creatures such as this generally
Speaker 1: depend on quote, a quick strike weapon that immediately incapacitates
Speaker 1: its victim. And of course these bioweapons might be enhanced
Speaker 1: by special features, such as in various deep sea ambush
Speaker 1: predators a bioluminescent lure, which again is not something they
Speaker 1: have created or engineered out of their environment, but it
Speaker 1: is a part of their body. So when we come
Speaker 1: back to this idea that what needs to be something
Speaker 1: that's built. It needs to be something that's engineered, or
Speaker 1: just a whole dug in the in the ground. Even Um,
Speaker 1: we come back to that same question, why don't we
Speaker 1: find more of this? And I actually found an interesting
Speaker 1: paper title out there, why are pitfall Traps so Rare
Speaker 1: in the natural World? By G. D Ruxton and M. H.
Speaker 1: Hansel And it appeared in Evolutionary Ecology in two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine. Interesting question. Yeah, So the authors here point
Speaker 1: out that in order to lay a trap, you generally
Speaker 1: need either advanced cognitive powers as with humans obviously, or
Speaker 1: you need specialists self secreted materials as with spiders and
Speaker 1: catis fly larvae um thing which the Catasta catass fly
Speaker 1: larvae use that their their secretions to create a net
Speaker 1: like even meshed trap like a silk um trap in
Speaker 1: order to filter catch their prey. That makes sense. So
Speaker 1: humans can create all kinds of traps because we have,
Speaker 1: you know, cognitive powers that allow us to imagine what
Speaker 1: could be done. How you know, other materials in the
Speaker 1: environment could be repurposed to uh to passively ensnare or
Speaker 1: kill prey animals and spiders and stuff. That that's just
Speaker 1: the trap you could almost say, is a part of
Speaker 1: their body, even though the web is a built thing
Speaker 1: there of of to secrete the silk for the web
Speaker 1: out of their bodies. And they have very instinctually driven
Speaker 1: behaviors for how they extrude that silk where and in
Speaker 1: what patterns? Right, So Ruxton enhansl here ultimately point out that, okay,
Speaker 1: we have the ant lion though, and of course the
Speaker 1: worm lion. Uh, these are exceptions to the rule. Um
Speaker 1: they make use of a pitfall trap. And so the
Speaker 1: authors asked, why is this basic tactic not more common
Speaker 1: in the animal world? How hard is it, after all
Speaker 1: to dig a hole? They're easy, they're cheap um, And
Speaker 1: yet you don't see this technique used by virtually anything
Speaker 1: outside of of some ant lions and wormlons. Apparently, the
Speaker 1: lack of more pitfall traps in nature was something of
Speaker 1: a mystery or and remains something of a mystery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that is interesting. Okay, so I it took me
Speaker 1: a second to get the distinction they're making. But they're
Speaker 1: saying that the ant lion and the wormline would be
Speaker 1: kind of an outlier because they don't have complex intelligence
Speaker 1: and imagination like humans. So they're not inventing traps with
Speaker 1: cognitive powers, But they also don't secrete a material that
Speaker 1: constitutes the basis of the trap like a spider. They're
Speaker 1: literally just building a trap out of the dead environment
Speaker 1: around of them by digging a conically shaped hole in
Speaker 1: such a pattern that that ants get stuck in it
Speaker 1: when they fall down the side. But and why is
Speaker 1: that so rare? Because it would seem like that that
Speaker 1: should be a strategy that lots of animals could easily employ. Right, yeah, again,
Speaker 1: holes are ultimately easy to make, low energy. Why not? Why? Why?
Speaker 1: Why is why is this cat not making a hole
Speaker 1: and using that as part of its hunting tactics? So what? What?
Speaker 1: What are their thoughts on this? Like, why would why
Speaker 1: wouldn't we see this more often? Well, they proposed to
Speaker 1: speculative reasons for the lack of pitfall traps in nature.
Speaker 1: The first one is pitfall traps may require a specialist
Speaker 1: micro habitat. In other words, you can't do this just anywhere.
Speaker 1: Conditions have to be just right, uh, such as you know,
Speaker 1: we can look at the ant lions, they have to
Speaker 1: be kind of sandy conditions, you know, you have to
Speaker 1: have that kind of granular environment um. So it's the
Speaker 1: kind of tactic that a potential trap builder would not
Speaker 1: necessarily be able to employ all over the place. You
Speaker 1: would have to depend on us again, on a specialist
Speaker 1: micro habitat. I think I recall from our Starlac episode
Speaker 1: where we had a segment about the ant lion that
Speaker 1: they needed the grains of soil to be of a
Speaker 1: particular size, like the sandy grains above or below a
Speaker 1: certain diameter threshold would not work very well for making
Speaker 1: the traps. Yeah, yeah, Now the second point is that
Speaker 1: with the ant lion in particular, the trap targets small prey,
Speaker 1: and since they may be more functionally tied to their
Speaker 1: trapped than spiders are, traps of this nature could serve
Speaker 1: as like basically a major bull's eye for potential predators.
Speaker 1: And indeed the main predators of ant lions and worm
Speaker 1: lions are birds who know what to look for. That's
Speaker 1: a really good point. So by building a trap and
Speaker 1: then sitting in it and waiting for your prey to
Speaker 1: fall in, you were also usually going to be making
Speaker 1: a structure that makes it easy for things that want
Speaker 1: to eat you. Two, I defind where you are. You
Speaker 1: know they don't have to look too hard because you've
Speaker 1: made a big hole in the ground, right and UH
Speaker 1: and spiders just have a little more leeway with the situation. Now,
Speaker 1: I should point out Hansel also wrote an entire book
Speaker 1: which I'm going to reference here in a minute. He
Speaker 1: spends a lot of time in that book talking about
Speaker 1: spiders and how, you know, some sometimes spider webs are
Speaker 1: very visible, in other times they are not, and how
Speaker 1: that plays into the you know, ultimately kind of complex
Speaker 1: relationship between spiders and UH and the creatures that would
Speaker 1: eat spiders. Um. But but just thinking about this as
Speaker 1: the trap being this conspicuous thing. This we actually see
Speaker 1: this in a lot of our fantastic trap fiction. You know,
Speaker 1: that moment when the target of the clever cinematic trap,
Speaker 1: especially if it's laid by the protagonists, uh, the the
Speaker 1: enemy almost sets it off, right, like the predator almost
Speaker 1: triggers the trip line you've prepared. But then something happens
Speaker 1: right the uh, the monster deduces that the trap is there,
Speaker 1: or it suspects that something is a little off. Oh,
Speaker 1: and maybe even the presence of a trap is how
Speaker 1: the hero knows that they have stumbled across the bad
Speaker 1: guys hideout. Yeah. Yeah, um. It even reminds me a
Speaker 1: bit of our recent weird house selection The Lift. This
Speaker 1: was the Killer Elevator movie. Uh, the Killer Elevator in
Speaker 1: this or I guess you were more specifically the weird
Speaker 1: bio brain that's been installed in the elevator shaft to
Speaker 1: power on these elevators. It's kind of an obligate trap predator. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's so tied to that environment that it's a
Speaker 1: little tricky. Like it, it's not able to pull off
Speaker 1: every kill and it's eventually destroyed by prey that is
Speaker 1: too clever for it. Brilliant analogy. This, this is true.
Speaker 1: The Killer Elevator is an obligate trap predator. I also
Speaker 1: have to point out, speaking of the Star Lack, is
Speaker 1: that recent mandalor In episodes have also, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of played with this idea. Yeah. Yeah, the Mighty Star,
Speaker 1: like the Sun. It's pretty impressive, but they make it
Speaker 1: clear that even these great trap predators can be a
Speaker 1: consumed by the mighty crate dragon that lives in the
Speaker 1: deserts of Tattooin. Uh. So, knowing you're there being you know,
Speaker 1: this identifiable organism in the sand that can have a
Speaker 1: huge downside to it. Now, I was trying to think
Speaker 1: of counterpoints to the idea that Okay, so uh, sitting
Speaker 1: at the bottom of a pitfall trap and waiting for
Speaker 1: prey to fall into you and then eating that that
Speaker 1: makes you vulnerable to two predators that want to find you. Well, well,
Speaker 1: what if you just make pitfall traps and then you
Speaker 1: go away and then you you know, leave them there
Speaker 1: and then come back like a human hunter might do,
Speaker 1: you know, leave a trap out in the woods and
Speaker 1: then come and see what it collected, lobster traps or something.
Speaker 1: But but I can see downsides to that as well,
Speaker 1: because if it's just a pit trap, you can imagine that, well,
Speaker 1: something might fall in there, but then something else might
Speaker 1: eat it before you get to it, um so, or
Speaker 1: it might you know, if you have to make these
Speaker 1: all over the place, you might spend a lot of
Speaker 1: energy going around from one to the other. So is
Speaker 1: that really all that much better than just hunting? Well,
Speaker 1: and then it kind of comes back to this idea
Speaker 1: that that the trap laid by an animal, especially um
Speaker 1: still requires the lethal mechanism, and in the case of
Speaker 1: the antline, the lethal lethal mechanism is itself. It is
Speaker 1: still essentially uh an ambush predator. Like again, like Emlyn says,
Speaker 1: quote a quick strike weapon that immediately incapacitates its victim. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that I can't believe. I didn't think of that. That's
Speaker 1: of course a good point. You have to find a
Speaker 1: way to kill the prey, right. So I mentioned that
Speaker 1: that Henzel has a has a whole book that deals
Speaker 1: with with with some of this a little bit, but
Speaker 1: just sort of the broader picture of animals building things.
Speaker 1: It's titled Animal Architecture, and I was reading through this
Speaker 1: a bit. He contends that we're not looking at traps
Speaker 1: when we're looking at cases of an animal baiting another animal,
Speaker 1: because traps are a kind of subset of animal architecture,
Speaker 1: an engineered space that aids and capture. Okay, So by
Speaker 1: his metric here, what the burrowing owl does by by
Speaker 1: leaving dung out around its nest and having this attract
Speaker 1: insects to it, that would not count as a trap
Speaker 1: because it is not a structure that in any way
Speaker 1: aids and capture. It just attracts prey to a site. Oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, I want to also speak speaking of
Speaker 1: the burrowing owl again, I want to throw in that
Speaker 1: that while some burrowing owls do build their own burrows,
Speaker 1: they're also burrowing owls that acquire the burrows of other creatures. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I want to read this quote from Hansel here. I
Speaker 1: think he puts it rather well uh concerning the animal
Speaker 1: architecture and traps quote. Whereas a house can just be
Speaker 1: a barrier between the builder and the outside world, a
Speaker 1: trap has a dynamic relationship between itself and the prey.
Speaker 1: The prey needs to approach the trap in a particular
Speaker 1: orientation to it, and then needs to be restrained by it.
Speaker 1: Traps are therefore more complex than homes and need to
Speaker 1: be more precise icily engineered. And then he goes on
Speaker 1: to point out the quote Among the vertebrates, trap builders
Speaker 1: were apparently absent until the recent history of man. Now
Speaker 1: he cites human mental capacity once more for the construction
Speaker 1: of such traps, noting quote, Virtually all non human trap
Speaker 1: builders use self secreted materials, and the capture principle they
Speaker 1: adopt is the net. The exceptions are simple in design
Speaker 1: and operation, as well as rare. And then he goes
Speaker 1: on to specifically mentioned ant lions, UH, worm lions, UM,
Speaker 1: and larval dip Tira. But anyway, a large takeaway here
Speaker 1: is that trap building is not as widespread in the
Speaker 1: animal kingdom as you might expect. Humans make a lot
Speaker 1: of traps. There are some very specialized animals, especially some invertebrates,
Speaker 1: that use traps made of materials that they secrete from
Speaker 1: their own bodies, But generally, trap building is not a
Speaker 1: very widespread hunting strategy among animals of planet Earth, in
Speaker 1: which case it would be very interesting to find examples
Speaker 1: of animals such as ants, that make traps in order
Speaker 1: to get their nutrition. And I guess that's a good
Speaker 1: segue to what I to the main focus of today's episode,
Speaker 1: which was a couple of examples I came across of
Speaker 1: ants that do something that could be interpreted as building
Speaker 1: traps as a hunting strategy. Yeah, and I mean it.
Speaker 1: It would make sense that we might find something like
Speaker 1: this in the ant world because ants are masters of construction. There,
Speaker 1: they alter their environment. They're capable of of practicing um agriculture. Uh.
Speaker 1: They as we discussed in previous episodes the show, they
Speaker 1: engage in complex conflicts that we may might well compare
Speaker 1: to warfare. They can solve problems there. I mean, the
Speaker 1: list goes on and on. Ants are amazing um as
Speaker 1: as of course, as as that the now Light D. E. O.
Speaker 1: Wilson was fond of reminding us, um you know, ants,
Speaker 1: there are incredible creatures that we've We've covered them numerous
Speaker 1: times in the show before, we're covering today, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure we'll cover them again exactly. So the first example
Speaker 1: I want to talk about I found so interesting, and
Speaker 1: this one also has some interesting differences in interpretations that
Speaker 1: came across. But just to to start with the basic report,
Speaker 1: I was reading about this in a paper published in
Speaker 1: Nature in the year two thousand five by A. Land
Speaker 1: Jean Pascal, Jean Solano, Julian Iralay, Bruno Corbara, and Jerome
Speaker 1: Oriville called arboreal ants build traps to capture prey uh.
Speaker 1: And also as a supplement to the paper in Nature,
Speaker 1: I was reading a summary feature that was also in
Speaker 1: Nature by Narel Towie published in April two thousand five
Speaker 1: called Amazonian aunts ambush prey. So here's the deal. There's
Speaker 1: a plant in the Amazon called her Tella phisophora or
Speaker 1: maybe Physophora p h y s O p h O
Speaker 1: r A. I'm gonna try to say phizopera. So these
Speaker 1: here here teleplants. Plants in this genus are woody trees
Speaker 1: or shrubs. I've seen them called both trees and shrubs,
Speaker 1: but there if you're trying to picture them as a tree,
Speaker 1: you should be imagining a small tree, a woody stems,
Speaker 1: but not like you know, sky high. Plants in this
Speaker 1: genus are found in the tropics across multiple continents, but
Speaker 1: their diversity is concentrated around the Amazon, and they typically
Speaker 1: have flowers that are pollinated by butterflies. And this one
Speaker 1: species in particular, her tell A Phizopera, is what the
Speaker 1: authors of the paper call an ant plant. This is
Speaker 1: a plant species that is known to have a specific
Speaker 1: biological relationship with a species of ant uh and these
Speaker 1: can be found throughout the world. They're they're very common
Speaker 1: mutual is ums or you know, various kinds of symbiotic
Speaker 1: relationships between ant colonies and the trees or plants they inhabit. Now,
Speaker 1: this plant in particular has a relationship with the arboreal
Speaker 1: ant Alomeras decim articulatus, and they live on the body
Speaker 1: of the plant, forming colony centers in what the authors
Speaker 1: of the paper called leaf pouches. They're these little bull
Speaker 1: looking things that can usually be found at the places
Speaker 1: where the branches split into leaves. They look like the
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to describe them. They're just these
Speaker 1: little like green lobes or orbs, and apparently the ants
Speaker 1: like to get inside those and make nests in there.
Speaker 1: Now already, one of the things that's that I'm reminded
Speaker 1: of is the idea of like a specialist micro habitat.
Speaker 1: And if you have a situation where a plant is
Speaker 1: is the home to the ants that they have this uh,
Speaker 1: this this ant plant relationship in place. Um, you know
Speaker 1: that the plant itself is kind of the environment, it's
Speaker 1: kind of the micro habitat that the ant is the
Speaker 1: master off. That's exactly right. But the interesting thing is,
Speaker 1: of course, ants being builders, some ants will form complex,
Speaker 1: you know, dugout colonies in the ground or or other
Speaker 1: types of interesting engineered environments. They can also engineer the
Speaker 1: micro habitat of the surface of a plant, and that's
Speaker 1: what we're gonna be talking about in this case. So
Speaker 1: uh oh, And I should say that the colonies that
Speaker 1: were looked at in this two thousand five paper were
Speaker 1: from French guyana in in northern South America. But so,
Speaker 1: what you find in these plants that are occupied by
Speaker 1: their by their familiar aunt species is that along the
Speaker 1: stems of the host plant, the ants will build what
Speaker 1: the authors of this paper called galleried structures, or sometimes
Speaker 1: they just say galleries. It's kind of hard to describe
Speaker 1: exactly what this is, but imagine a kind of platform
Speaker 1: built out over the surface of the stem of the plant,
Speaker 1: and it's a platform that the ants can crawl underneath.
Speaker 1: And then this platform has a kind of spongy texture,
Speaker 1: almost as if it's or honeycomb texture. It's aligned with
Speaker 1: all these holes in the platform that the ants can
Speaker 1: crawl in and out through. Generally, generally the holes are
Speaker 1: just slightly larger than the diameter of one of the
Speaker 1: worker ants heads. So they're these platforms raised above the
Speaker 1: stem of the plant. Ants crawl underneath them, but then
Speaker 1: crawl up and up and down in and out through
Speaker 1: the holes in the platform. Yeah, it is kind of
Speaker 1: difficult to describe it because it is so different from
Speaker 1: something that that humans would for the most part build,
Speaker 1: you know, um, you know, by virtue of the ants
Speaker 1: being far more mobile and sort of living in a
Speaker 1: in a more three dimensional space than human beings tend to.
Speaker 1: By the way, these are great to look up, probably
Speaker 1: unless you suffer from trip to phobia. In each case,
Speaker 1: stay far away if you're If you're freaked out by
Speaker 1: things like lotus pods, uh and um and random holes
Speaker 1: and things, yeah, you might, you might want to avoid
Speaker 1: this particular Google image search. Now, how do the ants
Speaker 1: build these galleries, Well, they apparently make them by cutting
Speaker 1: off tricombs from the stems of the plant. Tricombs is
Speaker 1: a word that comes from the Greek word for hairs.
Speaker 1: These are small, little fibery appendages that poke out from
Speaker 1: the surface of a plant. You've probably seen lots of
Speaker 1: plants before that have little hairy things all over the
Speaker 1: stem or the leaves. Those are tricombs, and they do
Speaker 1: look a lot like hairs. So the worker ants will
Speaker 1: move along the stem of a of a Hairtela fizophora plant,
Speaker 1: clearing away the tricombs, and then, just to read from
Speaker 1: the language used in the paper here quote then using
Speaker 1: uncut tricombs as pillars, they build the galleries vault by
Speaker 1: binding cut tricombs together with a compound that they regurgitate later,
Speaker 1: this structure is reinforced by the mycelium of a complex
Speaker 1: of sooty mold species that has been manipulated by the ants.
Speaker 1: Fungal growth starts around the holes and then spreads rapidly
Speaker 1: to the rest of the structure. So I think you
Speaker 1: you heard that right. So these ants build their galleries
Speaker 1: along the stem of the plant by cutting the hairs
Speaker 1: off of the plant where they live, then using those
Speaker 1: hairs as building materials along with their own barf as
Speaker 1: a kind of mortar, and then holding everything together by
Speaker 1: seating it with mold or fungus that they farm. So
Speaker 1: they have a kind of agricultural project for farming fungal
Speaker 1: rebar that they use to reinforce the galleries that they build.
Speaker 1: And in quotes given to the press, I've seen the
Speaker 1: authors of the study compare this composite material to fiberglass. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that does seem like a good comparison. Oh man, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just so amazing that it's not just like this
Speaker 1: physical um act, but they're actually have seating it with uh,
Speaker 1: with this this mold. Oh man, they're kind of they're
Speaker 1: they're building it, but they're also kind of growing it.
Speaker 1: It's amazing and and they tend to it as it grows.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to read another section from the study
Speaker 1: where they talk about the evidence that the ants are
Speaker 1: actively tending the fungus as it reinforces these structures. They say, quote,
Speaker 1: we noted that the stems of thirty four young seedlings,
Speaker 1: which had not yet developed leaf pouches, did not bear fungus.
Speaker 1: Nine saplings raised in a greenhouse in the absence of
Speaker 1: Alamira's that's the ants developed leaf pouches but never bore fungus. However,
Speaker 1: fifteen saplings raised in the presence of ants bore my celia,
Speaker 1: whose development was limited to the galleries. When we eliminated
Speaker 1: the associated ants from five of the fifteen, the fungus
Speaker 1: on the galleries grew into a disorganized structure, and none
Speaker 1: of the nine new stems that developed bore any fungus
Speaker 1: at all. Okay, So the fungus is only showing up
Speaker 1: on the plant when the ants are there on the plant.
Speaker 1: And if you take the ants away from the plant
Speaker 1: after they've been using the fungus to reinforce their their galleries,
Speaker 1: the fungus kind of grows out of control and what
Speaker 1: they call a disorganized structure, but with the ants still there,
Speaker 1: it stays nice and tightly formed around the holes in
Speaker 1: the galleries. So they're they're tending their garden. It's like
Speaker 1: a living and I don't know, it's like if you
Speaker 1: have to have maintenance workers constantly sort of gardening and
Speaker 1: tending to the fungus that held up your skyscrapers. But
Speaker 1: but but here's where we start getting to the trapping.
Speaker 1: So the authors of this studies say that they noticed
Speaker 1: that sometimes larger insects would become immobilized on the surface
Speaker 1: of the galleries. So you got these these spongy surfaces,
Speaker 1: ants crawling underneath them, and sometimes like a locust or
Speaker 1: a butterfly, some bigger insect lands on the gallery and
Speaker 1: then it gets stuck. What's going on here, Well, they
Speaker 1: started to investigate whether the galleries could be functioning as
Speaker 1: a type of trap. And here's what they say about
Speaker 1: how the ambush works. Quote. Our observations revealed that Alomiris
Speaker 1: workers hide in the galleries with their heads just under
Speaker 1: the holes, mandibles wide open, seemingly waiting for an insect
Speaker 1: to land. To kill the insect, they grasp its free legs,
Speaker 1: antenna or wings and move in and out of the
Speaker 1: holes in opposite directions until the prey is progressively stretched
Speaker 1: against the gallery and swarms of workers can sting it.
Speaker 1: The ants then slide the prey over the top of
Speaker 1: the gallery, again moving in and out of the holes,
Speaker 1: but this time in the same direction. They move it
Speaker 1: slowly towards a leaf pouch where they carve it up.
Speaker 1: Oh and then once they get to one of these
Speaker 1: population centers of the colony. You know, these these nests,
Speaker 1: nest sites in the leaf pouches. Uh, they tend to
Speaker 1: feed bits of protein from the insect to their young. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is amazing and suitably brutal for the world of ants.
Speaker 1: So this this, this larger creature lands or walks on
Speaker 1: to the structure. Um, you know, they're reaching out of
Speaker 1: holes to pull it straight down, and then they transfer
Speaker 1: it to a place where they can carve it up. Right.
Speaker 1: Uh So, yeah, there's no sentimentality in the world of ants.
Speaker 1: They're just like, okay, this is edible, it's time to
Speaker 1: get to butcher in. But anyway, these observations reveal this
Speaker 1: this fascinating three way interaction between the plant, the fungus,
Speaker 1: and the ant all sort of living together in this
Speaker 1: this this uh three way life cycle essentially that apparently
Speaker 1: serves the purpose of creating a trap to get larger
Speaker 1: insects you know these stuff. Oh, I don't think I mentioned,
Speaker 1: but the Alamira's decim articulatist ants are very small. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a structure that allows the tiny ants apparently
Speaker 1: to capture kill and butcher much much larger prey. All right.
Speaker 1: And of course the plant out of all of this
Speaker 1: gets some slight mutilation from the ants, but is protected
Speaker 1: from larger insects that would otherwise uh not on it
Speaker 1: and do more harm to it than just you know,
Speaker 1: creating an interesting lattice work out of its body. Presumably.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think often there is such a relationship
Speaker 1: going on. The insect also provides a benefit to the
Speaker 1: plant somehow, uh though in the sources I was reading,
Speaker 1: it wasn't clear to me exactly if it's known what
Speaker 1: what the major benefit provided by the ants is. But
Speaker 1: I would guess that's right, that they're probably protecting the
Speaker 1: plant from from herbivore large herbivore insects that would tow
Speaker 1: it sleeves down or something. But I don't know for sure,
Speaker 1: I gotta admit right, And then of course we also
Speaker 1: have to do always realize that in the natural world
Speaker 1: the line between parasitism and symbiosis is sometimes a bit thin.
Speaker 1: These are not relationships. They are governed by strict contracts.
Speaker 1: So you might see a little bit of push and
Speaker 1: pull over the course of evolutionary history. Yeah, ants will
Speaker 1: take whatever they can get, right, so you'll be careful
Speaker 1: about entering into a bargain with with with the ants.
Speaker 1: But on the other side of all this, I wanted
Speaker 1: to come back on it because I found a book
Speaker 1: where the trap interpretation of these structures has been challenged.
Speaker 1: And in fact, this book was by somebody who's come
Speaker 1: up on the on I think episodes we did about
Speaker 1: ants last year, the biologist Mark W. Moffatt. Yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: So he has a book called Adventures among Ants that
Speaker 1: was came out in two thousand ten University of California Press.
Speaker 1: And in this book I found a section where Moffatt
Speaker 1: argues that the trap interpretation of these structures built by
Speaker 1: Alamiras desim articulatus is in fact a misinterpretation. Now I'm
Speaker 1: not sure he's right about this, but you want to
Speaker 1: explain what he claims, So it's a bit of background
Speaker 1: in In the section of the book directly preceding this,
Speaker 1: Moffatt has been talking about his observations of various species
Speaker 1: of army ants on rating parties to forage for food
Speaker 1: and also on defensive patrols to protect the colony and
Speaker 1: the rating column from threats. And one of his observations
Speaker 1: in this in this preceding section is how difficult it
Speaker 1: is sometimes to tell the difference between these two behaviors
Speaker 1: and how easily one bleeds into the other. So, according
Speaker 1: to de Moffat, for most army ants, they're defensive attacks
Speaker 1: on a creature that is perceived to be threatening. The
Speaker 1: rating column can quickly turn into a foraging rate in itself,
Speaker 1: so if the threat is killed, it is pretty much
Speaker 1: immediately chopped up into pieces and carried away as food.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like if you imagine every monster
Speaker 1: movie ended with the heroes butchering and eating the monster
Speaker 1: after they find feeded it. Well, we do see that sometimes,
Speaker 1: in fact, that that occurs in the Mandalorian but um,
Speaker 1: the case of the Great Dragon. But but yeah, we
Speaker 1: should see more more consumption of the dragon of the
Speaker 1: dragons and monsters and so forth. Use every part of
Speaker 1: the monster be responsible. Well, I don't know. I mean
Speaker 1: that's you know, our humans are different than ants. I mean,
Speaker 1: ants are not going to let anything go to waste.
Speaker 1: Humans after you fought a monster, you might just want
Speaker 1: to have nothing to do with it. To each species
Speaker 1: their own. But anyway, so from here, Moffatt moves on
Speaker 1: to describing the aunt. I've been talking about Elmira's decim articulatus,
Speaker 1: and he's describing its living situation. The one distinction he
Speaker 1: makes I couldn't find out what was what was the
Speaker 1: disconnect here? But he said, you remember how I said
Speaker 1: that the ants build these gallery structures out of Tricomb's
Speaker 1: cut from the plants, a little plant hairs mixed with
Speaker 1: their own regurgitation or vomit, and then uh and then
Speaker 1: lined with the mycelium of the fungus that they cultivate.
Speaker 1: Math It describes it the same way, but he mentions
Speaker 1: feces rather than vomit. And I don't know who's right there,
Speaker 1: But anyway, Moffatt gives a few reasons that he had
Speaker 1: doubts about the generally accepted interpretation of this structure as
Speaker 1: a trap, specifically as a trap, because he says a
Speaker 1: trap implies that, for example, a locust landing on the
Speaker 1: ant gallery would not have landed there if it saw
Speaker 1: the ants. The trap would be performing the function of
Speaker 1: hiding the ants, so you know, they're hidden beneath the
Speaker 1: vault of the gallery, so that the prey insect feels
Speaker 1: it's safe enough to land and then they jump out
Speaker 1: and grab it. Okay, this would be in keeping with
Speaker 1: say the trapdoor spider. Uh would probably be a great
Speaker 1: example of this. Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's comparable.
Speaker 1: That that's how it would function as a trap. But
Speaker 1: Moffatt writes that he thinks this is unlikely because he
Speaker 1: doubts that grasshoppers would really be able to notice the
Speaker 1: tiny workers of this ant species anyway, quote particularly in
Speaker 1: mid leap, or that they would be able to change
Speaker 1: course in mid leap after noticing them. So he was
Speaker 1: a little iffy on that. He's like, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that the trap would really serve much purpose if it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be hiding the ants from the prey animal,
Speaker 1: because these are these are insects that are much larger
Speaker 1: than the ants. Anyway, right, So he's saying basically, he's
Speaker 1: saying like this might be if this was a trap,
Speaker 1: which he doesn't think it is. Uh, it would be
Speaker 1: a preposterous trap. Uh, an unnecessary trap. And while again
Speaker 1: we love unnecessarily complex and preposterous traps in our cinema,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about cinema here. We're talking about evolution
Speaker 1: and sufficiency. Yeah. Yeah, and things need to be ruthlessly efficient.
Speaker 1: And if it's not ruthlessly efficient, uh, it is going
Speaker 1: to change or go away. But anyway, those are his suspicions.
Speaker 1: So he decided to put them to the test. So
Speaker 1: he tells a story of that that he was studying
Speaker 1: colonies of this ant in the wild in Ecuador, and
Speaker 1: he put together a test to interrogate the trap interpretation.
Speaker 1: So to read from the section of Moffett's Bok where
Speaker 1: he describes this test, he says, quote, I hung a
Speaker 1: mosquito net over a plant with a thriving Alamira's colony,
Speaker 1: added a hundred grasshoppers and katie DIDs, and sat inside
Speaker 1: for the next five mornings. An unusual case of using
Speaker 1: a mosquito net to keep insects in instead of out,
Speaker 1: even after the grasshoppers settled down, they were indiscriminate in
Speaker 1: their movements, hopping from where the ants hid under the
Speaker 1: structures to where ants strolled in full view, to where
Speaker 1: there were no ants at all. When they landed among
Speaker 1: the ants, even on the structures, they got away unhurt. Certainly,
Speaker 1: if the structures served as traps, they were inefficient ones.
Speaker 1: So he's saying in his observations here, he's seeing very
Speaker 1: little correlation between the structures and the hunting behaviors of
Speaker 1: the ants or the behaviors of the prey insects. So
Speaker 1: what purple us does he believe the galleries are serving well?
Speaker 1: He points out that the galleries tend to run along
Speaker 1: the stems of the tree, connecting each nest pouch to
Speaker 1: to another nest mouch, and they quote contain a highway
Speaker 1: of workers commuting from nest to nest. And then he
Speaker 1: points out that other insects, including other ant species, do
Speaker 1: sometimes build various types of physical covers over their trails,
Speaker 1: which are generally interpreted to be defensive in nature. For example,
Speaker 1: some marauder and driver ants have been observed to build
Speaker 1: soil covers over their trails, So could that be what's
Speaker 1: going on in this case? Could these galleries that the
Speaker 1: ants build actually be defensive in nature? Another strike here?
Speaker 1: According to Moffat, he observed that the workers at his
Speaker 1: study site did not actually sit and wait at the
Speaker 1: holes in these galleries, as you might expect them to
Speaker 1: do if they were planning an ambush. He says that
Speaker 1: wind conditions were normal, so like if the colony is
Speaker 1: not in an agitated state, things are just sort of
Speaker 1: going along normally. Most of the gaps in the gallery
Speaker 1: structures were unoccupied, but he says this changed when there
Speaker 1: appeared to be some kind of threat to the colony. Quote.
Speaker 1: After a day of pulling grasshoppers from my hair, I
Speaker 1: noticed interlopers of another ant, a species of fidoli or
Speaker 1: big headed ant, climbing the plant to pin down a
Speaker 1: wounded grasshopper missed by the Alamiras. Upon the arrival of
Speaker 1: the fidoli ants, the Alamiris workers began to guard each
Speaker 1: of the several dozen entrances to their arcade. And that's
Speaker 1: the arcade, is what he's calling the things that the
Speaker 1: other authors called the galleries, the several dozen entrances to
Speaker 1: their arcade nearest the commotion caused by the intruders. These guards,
Speaker 1: aided by nest mates roaming the arcade surface, also caught
Speaker 1: and killed one fidoli and carried it off. So, based
Speaker 1: on these observations, Moffatt argues that the galleries are more
Speaker 1: likely defensive to TechEd trails of workers moving from one
Speaker 1: leaf pouch to the other, but that when something attacks
Speaker 1: or threatens the colony, the workers quickly shift their behavior
Speaker 1: from travel to defense, and then they occupy the holes
Speaker 1: and start biting violently at anything that comes near. And
Speaker 1: of course if they are able to immobilize an attacker
Speaker 1: or not necessarily an attacker, if they're able to immobilize
Speaker 1: whatever it is that put them on the defense, they
Speaker 1: immediately shift rolls again and turn that threat into food
Speaker 1: and begin butchering it for the colony again to to
Speaker 1: cook the monsters so speak. So we might be better
Speaker 1: to think of these as defensive fortifications, kind of like
Speaker 1: to to use like a medieval castle or fortress scenario.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the various uh crinulations and murder
Speaker 1: holes and uh and and aero slits, except with the
Speaker 1: with the with the added point that in this case,
Speaker 1: the occupants of the castle or fortress would eat those
Speaker 1: that they killed to ending it right, That's what Moffatt argues. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so to to finish up his section, he says
Speaker 1: in the end, quote in this way the organization of
Speaker 1: a super organism. He's referring to ants there because I
Speaker 1: think you can make the argument that, you know, an
Speaker 1: ant colony might be best understood as one organism rather
Speaker 1: than many. It is a super organism composed of many
Speaker 1: different bodies, he says it quote can be more responsive
Speaker 1: than the tissues in a body. Trail Bound workers can
Speaker 1: shift seamlessly in their behavior from transport to protection to predation.
Speaker 1: It's as if one's liver could change function when the
Speaker 1: heart is incapacitated and pump blood. So obviously I don't
Speaker 1: know who's right here. Moffatt's book is more than ten
Speaker 1: years old at this point. Uh, And most of the
Speaker 1: things I read about this ant species, Alameira stsim Articulatas
Speaker 1: still described the galleries as ambush traps. And and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure which interpretation is correct, but I do think
Speaker 1: either way, Moffatt makes a very interesting point about the
Speaker 1: flu widity of function when it comes to ant behavior.
Speaker 1: How you know one moment's enemy is the next moment's lunch. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that, Like the ant colony is not just trying
Speaker 1: to do one thing. Um, it has a lot of
Speaker 1: objectives and it has again this fluidity of function, whereas
Speaker 1: it's it's far easier to look at at a web
Speaker 1: building spider and know what's up. You know that the
Speaker 1: web is it's uh is its purpose, the web is
Speaker 1: kind of its soul uh, and there's no question about
Speaker 1: why it constructed the web. I guess also that this
Speaker 1: raises another question about what counts as a quote trap
Speaker 1: because assuming for a second that Moffatt's interpretation is correct,
Speaker 1: I don't know it is. But if he's right that
Speaker 1: these structures are primarily to defend the ant trails, but
Speaker 1: then when some when a threat presents itself, they turn
Speaker 1: around and use the holes in the galleries as murder
Speaker 1: holes and then eat whatever they can immobilize, does that
Speaker 1: count as a trap? Like? How how specialized does a
Speaker 1: structure have to be for the purpose of catching prey
Speaker 1: in order to be thought of as a trap, Because
Speaker 1: you can imagine other examples where an animal builds a
Speaker 1: structure that's primarily defensive in some way, it's more like
Speaker 1: the home from the example you talked about at the
Speaker 1: beginning in that book. You know, it's a barrier between
Speaker 1: you and the outside world. Yet it has some kind
Speaker 1: of feature that like another animal or something could get
Speaker 1: stuck on or something. You know, it's somehow allows you
Speaker 1: to sometimes opportunistically harvest from the structure and then eat
Speaker 1: from it. And does that count as a trap? Now?
Speaker 1: I haven't seen this movie in a very long time,
Speaker 1: but um, but I think there might be something comparable
Speaker 1: and Home Alone too, am I? Right? Oh? Lost in
Speaker 1: New York, the one with Tim Curry. O what Tim
Speaker 1: Curry is in that one? I think he plays a
Speaker 1: He plays a snooty bell hop or something that sounds
Speaker 1: about right. Yeah, but yeah, I think the uh Actually,
Speaker 1: we were trying to figure what this out, what this was,
Speaker 1: and Seths just chimed in to let us know he
Speaker 1: was right. Um. The house where the builds the traps
Speaker 1: in Home Alone two is a house that's like under renovation,
Speaker 1: so it already has featured Like all the traps don't
Speaker 1: have to be imagined from scratch. There are already features
Speaker 1: of the house. I don't remember exactly what they are,
Speaker 1: but there are things that are dangerous about it already. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. But I wanted to talk about my second
Speaker 1: example of ants potentially doing something that you could interpret
Speaker 1: as a trap, and this one also involves using foreign
Speaker 1: materials around the nest. So the second example was described
Speaker 1: in a paper that I was reading published in twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen in the journal Ecological Entomology by A. Nacio Gomez,
Speaker 1: Diogo Santiago, Ricardo Campos, and Geraldo Vasconcelos. It was called
Speaker 1: why do fight only oxy Ops ants place feathers around
Speaker 1: their nests? And I also got some additional information from
Speaker 1: reading an article about the study published in Scientific American
Speaker 1: by Joshua rap Learn in November twenty nineteen. But here's
Speaker 1: the deal. So there is this species of ant called
Speaker 1: Fidoli oxyops. We were already talking about some fidoli ants
Speaker 1: in the last example because the remember the fidoli ants
Speaker 1: invaded the tree and then they got kind of butchered
Speaker 1: by the by the Alamira's ants. But Fidoli answer a
Speaker 1: genus known as the big head ants, and this species,
Speaker 1: in particular, Fidoli oxyops, is native to South American savannahs.
Speaker 1: So these should be you know, grasslands. Ants sometimes they
Speaker 1: appear to do something pretty weird. They collect feathers and
Speaker 1: place them around the entrance of their nests. So, if
Speaker 1: you imagine the nest is buried, the entrance is basically
Speaker 1: a hole in the ground, and then you might just
Speaker 1: find feathers all around the hole, scattered around on the
Speaker 1: ground outside the hole. That's weird. It might make it
Speaker 1: look like the ants aid a live chicken or something,
Speaker 1: but that is not what happened. They appear to collect
Speaker 1: the feathers and put them there. Yeah, it kind of
Speaker 1: looks like there's a hole in the ground and like
Speaker 1: a bird was sucked down that hole. And this is
Speaker 1: the the cartoonish remnants of that incident. I thought the
Speaker 1: same thing. Yeah, I was like pop and then just
Speaker 1: puff of feathers they settle around it. But no, that
Speaker 1: is not what has happened. The ants put the feathers there. Uh. Strange.
Speaker 1: So this paper published in twenty nineteen in Ecological Anthropology.
Speaker 1: It claims that these feathers function as bait to attract
Speaker 1: prey animals, which then tumble into the nest entrance as
Speaker 1: if it were a pit trap. And the Scientific American
Speaker 1: article actually reports a bit of the background on the paper.
Speaker 1: It says that the studies first author in Nacio Gomez,
Speaker 1: is an ecologist at the Federal University of Visosa in Brazil,
Speaker 1: and while walking around city arcs and his college campus,
Speaker 1: he noticed examples of these ant nest entrances with feathers
Speaker 1: all around him. Apparently this had been observed before. And
Speaker 1: also I was looking at another paper about this ant species,
Speaker 1: Vidal the oxyops uh This one was by Diego Acis
Speaker 1: at all from one and this paper said that in
Speaker 1: addition to feathers, there will sometimes be other objects around
Speaker 1: these nest and entrances, including shells, flower petals, and seeds.
Speaker 1: But this study in particular was was focusing on the
Speaker 1: feathers and uh so, so he noticed these feathers around
Speaker 1: the entrances and he wondered what was the deal with this.
Speaker 1: Apparently this had been observed before, and there were already
Speaker 1: a couple of untested hypotheses in the scientific literature about
Speaker 1: what the feathers were doing there. One idea was that
Speaker 1: the feathers could collect do in arid regions, so they
Speaker 1: would help provide the ants with water in the mornings.
Speaker 1: And the other idea was that somehow the feathers could
Speaker 1: serve as lures, attracting prey to the nest, and so
Speaker 1: the twenty nineteen study tested both ideas. In one experiment,
Speaker 1: the researchers supplied the ant colonies with water soaked cotton balls,
Speaker 1: so made sure they had access to plenty of water,
Speaker 1: but the ants in these cases preferred to collect feathers anyway.
Speaker 1: It did not seem like access to water played any
Speaker 1: role in in their their desire to collect feathers, and
Speaker 1: this could be evidence that the feathers were not primarily
Speaker 1: for collecting water. But another test was designed to see
Speaker 1: if feathers scattered on the ground would attract prey. So
Speaker 1: they tested this with artificial traps that were made to
Speaker 1: resemble the nest entrances of these ants, and the team
Speaker 1: found that if you put out a trap and scattered
Speaker 1: feathers around it, for some reason, it will tend to
Speaker 1: trap more just sort of uh wanderers, you know, arthropods
Speaker 1: that are out on the ground than traps without feathers.
Speaker 1: And so interesting question, why would they do that. Why
Speaker 1: would a hole in the ground surrounded by feathers get
Speaker 1: more bugs to fall into it? It's not known, but
Speaker 1: Gomez suggests that maybe it's something about the smell of
Speaker 1: the feathers, something about the visual appearance. Maybe a quote
Speaker 1: he gives to the Scientific American article, he says, just
Speaker 1: in general, soil insects are quote very curious, So maybe
Speaker 1: putting an unusual item around the entrance to the nest
Speaker 1: will just tend to get wandering bugs to walk up
Speaker 1: to it and see if it's something of use to them.
Speaker 1: But I think this would not count just as baiting
Speaker 1: the way the way the burrowing ow owl example would
Speaker 1: with the cow dung or the bison dung, because in
Speaker 1: this case it's not just to get the insects close
Speaker 1: to the nest. In this case, the actual nest entrances,
Speaker 1: basically holes in the ground, function quite well as pit
Speaker 1: traps because once the prey insect falls in, they have
Speaker 1: difficulty climbing back out, and the ants will rather quickly
Speaker 1: grab and butcher them. Now, this is clearly not the
Speaker 1: only way this ant species has to acquire prey. Fight
Speaker 1: only oxyops do leave the nest to acquire prey. They
Speaker 1: forage like other ant species. But it's possible that using
Speaker 1: the nest as a pit trap and surrounding it with
Speaker 1: feathers as some kind of UH evolved behavior for luring
Speaker 1: more insects into the hole. UH. That helps the colony
Speaker 1: supplement their diet during especially times of the years, such
Speaker 1: as the dry season in this region, when prey is
Speaker 1: more scarce, harder to come by. So they wouldn't be
Speaker 1: obligate trap builders. They would they would be sort of
Speaker 1: they would have like a trap business on the side.
Speaker 1: I guess you would say, yes, it is if the
Speaker 1: trap interpretation is correct. It seems like this would be
Speaker 1: a supplemental role in getting extra food to them, extra
Speaker 1: diet diversity, especially in times when they're they're going to
Speaker 1: be getting less in their foraging, or maybe when they're
Speaker 1: doing less foraging. Okay, because there you know again they're
Speaker 1: altering their immediate environment anyway. Um. There so and then again,
Speaker 1: a whole like this is not a huge energy investment. UM.
Speaker 1: Who already part of the nest the nest. I guess
Speaker 1: the question is coming back to those those reasons that
Speaker 1: were put forth UM earlier that we don't see more
Speaker 1: pit traps. Uh. Does this would this make the the
Speaker 1: ant population more visible to potential predators? UM? I mean
Speaker 1: maybe maybe so maybe not. Maybe maybe the animals that
Speaker 1: would be interested in eating the ants already would be
Speaker 1: able to detect their presence. And then again, also the
Speaker 1: ants have more capabilities than that one little larva at
Speaker 1: the bottom of a small pit. You know, we're not
Speaker 1: dealing with one organism. We're dealing with this, um uh,
Speaker 1: this entire colony of organisms that that kind of behave
Speaker 1: as a single organism. Yeah, obviously I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know what all the you know, the cost benefit at
Speaker 1: analysis of this evolutionary calculus would be um. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: there must be some reason why by having your aunt
Speaker 1: nest as a as a pit trap in this environment,
Speaker 1: for this ant is is not such a it's not
Speaker 1: such a danger that it outweighs the benefit of getting
Speaker 1: some bugs to fall in as free meals. But I
Speaker 1: also like this because it's like by house analogy. It's
Speaker 1: like if your entire house was just like below the
Speaker 1: ground and the entrance to the house was a spike
Speaker 1: pit trap like a tiger trap, just waited for things
Speaker 1: to fall in and be like, oh, bonus, here's dinner,
Speaker 1: and you alway, and that you had the lures, you
Speaker 1: had the feathers, all around. I don't know what that
Speaker 1: would be. In the human example, you put just cotton
Speaker 1: candy around the around the trap that you come in through. Well,
Speaker 1: this is certainly another fascinating example. Um yeah, and I
Speaker 1: love how both present the possibility of ants building traps.
Speaker 1: But since they are ants, like, it's it's not that
Speaker 1: cut and dry like like, ants have a complexity all
Speaker 1: their own, so you can't really look at them in
Speaker 1: the same way you would look at a a single
Speaker 1: solitary spider or or certainly even the you know, the
Speaker 1: human example, Like, what we do with traps and how
Speaker 1: we think about traps is a rather different scenario compared
Speaker 1: to anything, you know, anything that we're seeing in in
Speaker 1: several of these animal examples. Yeah, well, I guess that
Speaker 1: does it for for ant traps on my end. But well,
Speaker 1: who knows what the future will hall. Perhaps there'll be
Speaker 1: more exciting studies coming out of the world of ant research.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it's highly possible. I mean we're
Speaker 1: still we're just still making a significant discoveries about about
Speaker 1: ant species and what they're up to. There are frontiers
Speaker 1: of ants you couldn't even dream of. There are ant
Speaker 1: traps that we don't even know about yet because they
Speaker 1: haven't been sprung on us when you fall into them.
Speaker 1: You go through the two thousand one stargate and in
Speaker 1: the in the room with the the French furniture. You know,
Speaker 1: we've never watched an ant movie for a weird house cinema.
Speaker 1: I wonder if we should at some point. Oh, I
Speaker 1: have for years been looking at the cover of a
Speaker 1: Blu ray at Videodrome called Phase four. It's a picture
Speaker 1: of a hand with some ants. I know it involves ants.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything else. I guess the question I
Speaker 1: would have, especially after talking about ants like this again,
Speaker 1: is are we looking at thinking about movies that that
Speaker 1: just that have a giant ant in them and have
Speaker 1: encounters with various giant ants, or is it truly about
Speaker 1: the ants as this kind of super organism. Um and
Speaker 1: I like the ladder. Yeah, though maybe having a giant
Speaker 1: sized ant is kind of a way through our fantastic
Speaker 1: fiction that we think about super organisms. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like, yes, the answer small, but they they work
Speaker 1: together and they're able to do great things. So we
Speaker 1: just think of like a giant ant. That's like just
Speaker 1: one way of contemplating what they're capable of. So the
Speaker 1: next time Aunt movies come back, if you're out there
Speaker 1: thinking about resurrecting the giant Aunt movie, consider having them
Speaker 1: like tear people apart. Things like that, um you know,
Speaker 1: crawling out of windows, pulling people Taunt against the sides
Speaker 1: of a building and then transferring them up to the
Speaker 1: rooftop and tearing the new pieces. Nice final processing. Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, well we're gonna go and close out this
Speaker 1: episode here, but we'd love to hear from everybody out
Speaker 1: there about traps, traps and movies. Traps in the human world,
Speaker 1: traps in the animal world. Um uh, is there is
Speaker 1: there some corner of this topic you'd like for us
Speaker 1: to explore more in the future. Let us know we
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you. If you would like
Speaker 1: to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: you will find them in the Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday's Listener
Speaker 1: Mail on Monday's Short Form Artifact on Wednesdays. On Friday,
Speaker 1: we do weird how cinema thiss are Time to set
Speaker 1: aside most serious concerns and just look at a strange film.
Speaker 1: As always, you can also get to us rather quickly
Speaker 1: by going to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest topic for the future, just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact It's Stuff to Blow
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