1
00:00:02,040 --> 00:00:07,560
Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff,

2
00:00:07,560 --> 00:00:11,399
Speaker 1: it's Christian Sager. The horrors of hurricanes in Texas are

3
00:00:11,640 --> 00:00:15,240
Speaker 1: right out of an hieronymous bosh painting. The flooding, the

4
00:00:15,320 --> 00:00:19,279
Speaker 1: ruined homes, the tens of thousands of displaced people, not

5
00:00:19,360 --> 00:00:22,799
Speaker 1: to mention the chemical fires. There's more, of course, but

6
00:00:23,280 --> 00:00:26,960
Speaker 1: what seems to have captured the public imagination most are

7
00:00:27,000 --> 00:00:31,880
Speaker 1: the vast, rust colored rafts of stinging fire ants floating

8
00:00:31,920 --> 00:00:37,480
Speaker 1: atop Houston's already toxic floodwaters. The red imported fire ant,

9
00:00:37,479 --> 00:00:41,640
Speaker 1: also known as Solenopsis invicta, is native to South America,

10
00:00:41,720 --> 00:00:44,560
Speaker 1: but the aggressive species found its way to the United

11
00:00:44,560 --> 00:00:47,720
Speaker 1: States from Argentina in the nineteen thirties in the cargo

12
00:00:47,760 --> 00:00:51,600
Speaker 1: holds of ships. Finding themselves in a new land without

13
00:00:51,680 --> 00:00:56,120
Speaker 1: natural predators, they quickly spread throughout the southeastern United States,

14
00:00:56,480 --> 00:00:59,440
Speaker 1: making their way through Texas and all the way to

15
00:00:59,520 --> 00:01:03,320
Speaker 1: California by the nineteen nineties. Now the ants can be

16
00:01:03,360 --> 00:01:06,680
Speaker 1: found in densities that far surpass what they are able

17
00:01:06,720 --> 00:01:10,280
Speaker 1: to maintain in their native habitat in the Southern Hemisphere.

18
00:01:10,720 --> 00:01:14,560
Speaker 1: These ants do shockingly well in wet weather because they

19
00:01:14,600 --> 00:01:19,480
Speaker 1: evolved on the Amazon River floodplains, which means they're used

20
00:01:19,480 --> 00:01:23,080
Speaker 1: to their nests being inundated during the rainy season each year.

21
00:01:23,360 --> 00:01:26,399
Speaker 1: They've had a couple million years to come up with

22
00:01:26,480 --> 00:01:30,160
Speaker 1: a flood drill, and it involves sticking together. Fire ants

23
00:01:30,200 --> 00:01:34,320
Speaker 1: are you social, which means one ant can't survive by itself.

24
00:01:34,480 --> 00:01:37,960
Speaker 1: They all need each other and a queen to produce

25
00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:41,680
Speaker 1: offspring for the entire colonies. So when their nest floods

26
00:01:41,840 --> 00:01:45,679
Speaker 1: up to five hundred thousand or so, worker ants surround

27
00:01:45,760 --> 00:01:49,920
Speaker 1: their queen and her eggs, linking arms and forming a

28
00:01:50,040 --> 00:01:53,920
Speaker 1: floating raft with their waxy bodies creating pockets of air

29
00:01:54,000 --> 00:01:57,760
Speaker 1: for buoyancy. They link themselves together with so many points

30
00:01:57,760 --> 00:02:02,280
Speaker 1: of contact between different ants, their raft shares physical properties

31
00:02:02,480 --> 00:02:06,640
Speaker 1: similar to fabric. In fact, a single ant might link

32
00:02:06,720 --> 00:02:10,760
Speaker 1: with twenty other individuals in the mass. Fire ants are

33
00:02:10,840 --> 00:02:14,640
Speaker 1: one of very few organisms capable of working together to

34
00:02:14,720 --> 00:02:18,520
Speaker 1: make large structures. How the ants accomplished this has long

35
00:02:18,639 --> 00:02:23,919
Speaker 1: fascinated not only biologists, but also physicists and engineers. This

36
00:02:24,000 --> 00:02:28,360
Speaker 1: ball making behavior creates a living material that switches between

37
00:02:28,400 --> 00:02:32,040
Speaker 1: having physical properties of a solid and then a liquid.

38
00:02:32,320 --> 00:02:35,680
Speaker 1: And because none of these individual ants is leading the charge.

39
00:02:36,080 --> 00:02:39,919
Speaker 1: Roboticists are interested in what fire ants can teach us

40
00:02:39,960 --> 00:02:45,000
Speaker 1: about modular robotics. They are an inspiration. When the raft

41
00:02:45,040 --> 00:02:48,840
Speaker 1: reaches something dry, the ants will swarm up it for survival.

42
00:02:49,120 --> 00:02:51,600
Speaker 1: It could be a treat or a telephone pole, or

43
00:02:51,800 --> 00:02:54,480
Speaker 1: it could be a house on whose roof humans are

44
00:02:54,520 --> 00:02:57,680
Speaker 1: taking shelter, or it could be the ore of a robo.

45
00:02:58,000 --> 00:03:01,640
Speaker 1: So for now, just remember. If you see a raft

46
00:03:01,720 --> 00:03:05,680
Speaker 1: of fire ants floating by you in the deluge, take

47
00:03:05,720 --> 00:03:09,600
Speaker 1: the advice of Paul Nestor, a fire ant expert at

48
00:03:09,639 --> 00:03:13,400
Speaker 1: Texas A and M's Agra Life Extension Service. He says

49
00:03:13,760 --> 00:03:18,640
Speaker 1: to avoid avoid avoid them. But if you come across

50
00:03:18,680 --> 00:03:21,480
Speaker 1: a floating raft of ants, you can battle it by

51
00:03:21,480 --> 00:03:24,680
Speaker 1: pouring soapy water over it. It will drown the nest

52
00:03:24,800 --> 00:03:27,440
Speaker 1: by removing the air bubbles that allow them to float,

53
00:03:27,760 --> 00:03:36,400
Speaker 1: and you will commit aunt genocide. Today's episode was written

54
00:03:36,440 --> 00:03:39,680
Speaker 1: by Jesslyn Shields and produced by Dylan Fagin. For more

55
00:03:39,760 --> 00:03:42,200
Speaker 1: on this and other topics, please visit us at how

56
00:03:42,240 --> 00:03:55,160
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com