WEBVTT - From the Vault: Ant Wars, Episode 1 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:07.720 Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name 0:00:07.760 --> 0:00:10.880 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're 0:00:10.920 --> 0:00:13.399 bringing you an episode from the Vault. This is aunt 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:18.079 War's Part one, originally aired on June twelve. Should we 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:31.200 go right in, Let's do it. For years, the Trailhead 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:34.360 nest had been protected by a ten thousand member force 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:40.760 of its adult members or soldiers. A soldier's exoskeleton, twice 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:44.080 the size of that of an ordinary worker is literally 0:00:44.159 --> 0:00:48.520 heavy armor, thick, tough, and hitted in places for resilience 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:52.320 and strength. A pair of spines project backward from the 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:55.760 mid section of the body to protect the waist. Spikes 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:58.360 protect the neck, and the rear margin of the head 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:02.360 is curved forward, forming a helmet. When attacked, the soldier 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:05.320 can pull in her legs and antenna and tighten up 0:01:05.360 --> 0:01:08.680 the segments of her body, turning her entire surface into 0:01:08.760 --> 0:01:12.800 a shield. The ordinary Trailhead workers, while built for labor, 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:16.920 were also available for combat. They served as the light infantry, 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:19.679 using the swiftness and the agility of their supple bodies 0:01:19.720 --> 0:01:22.839 to dart in and out of enemy lines, seizing any 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:26.360 leg or antenna available, and holding onto it until their 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:29.360 nest mates could close in and grab another body part. 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:33.000 When the adversary was finally pinned and spread eagled, others 0:01:33.040 --> 0:01:36.160 piled on to bite, sting or spray her with poison. 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:51.240 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:01:51.360 --> 0:02:00.960 Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Off to Blow your Mind. 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:04.080 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:06.880 today It's Ants, folks. That's right, this is going to 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:11.440 be Ant Wars Episode one. Uh, the Ampire strikes Back. 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:13.760 Perhaps I'm not sure. I haven't worked out that the 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:17.080 full title yet, but yeah, we're gonna be taking a 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:20.560 couple of episodes to look at the wars of the Ants, 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:23.840 and it seemed ideal that we kick off with a 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:28.120 cold reading from the novel ant Hill, a novel by E. O. 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:31.600 Wilson which came out in so we were talking about 0:02:31.639 --> 0:02:33.960 this novel before we got started. It actually got some 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:37.280 surprisingly good reviews. I was thinking about picking up a 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:41.399 copy and reading it until I discovered that a significant 0:02:41.440 --> 0:02:44.560 portion of this novel is about human characters. And I 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:48.320 was hoping with EO. Wilson, you know, especially in the past, 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:50.720 we've talked about that video where he like plunges his 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:54.160 hand into a nest of fire ants and beams with 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:57.679 the most the most radiant joy as the ants all 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:01.080 biden sting him. At the same time, I was hoping 0:03:01.160 --> 0:03:03.440 it would be all about ants, because if anybody could 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:06.560 do ants as compelling central characters, I would think it 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:08.760 would be E. O. Wilson. Yeah, I think I was 0:03:08.760 --> 0:03:11.560 looking at one review of it. There was glowing that 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:14.239 said that they're about seventy pages in the novel that 0:03:14.400 --> 0:03:17.600 only E. O. Wilson could have written. Um and uh, 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:19.639 and I think this gives everyone a little taste of that. 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:22.920 And when we say, you know, surprisingly, you know great reviews, 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:26.440 you know it's obviously EO. Wilson is a is a 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:29.880 tremendous author. But generally he was he was associated with 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:34.960 with nonfiction, uh, conveying oftentimes conveying science very effectively, um 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:37.920 to a general audience. But of course fiction is a 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:40.280 slightly different scenario. So you might expect even a very 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:44.080 talented nonfiction writer, uh, you know, to to to perhaps 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:47.400 stumble a bit in trying to create a work of 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:49.840 fiction like this. Oh totally, that's what I mean. I 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.080 didn't mean, like EO. Wilson's a dummy. I just meant 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:55.400 that usually when somebody who's not primarily a fiction writer 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:57.440 is like, yeah, I'll do a novel, it's it's not 0:03:57.520 --> 0:03:59.520 always great. Well, you know, the main in the main 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:02.400 example that always comes to my mind is would be 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:06.200 the the Tech Wars novels that were attributed to William 0:04:06.240 --> 0:04:08.760 Shatner that although I understand it was more of a 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:12.080 ghostwriting scenario, it was in place and there was some 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:15.240 some spiritual composition in there. But but I have to 0:04:15.240 --> 0:04:18.280 say it was not the tech Wars that inspired inspired 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:20.919 me to to seek this topic out this week, but 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:25.320 rather the Clone Wars um and and also the miniature 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:29.400 board gaming in general. So my son and I recently 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:33.520 ordered a copy of Fantasy Flight Star Wars Legion miniature Game, 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:37.640 which is a miniature um war game in the tradition 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:41.360 of things like say Warhammer, Warhammer forty thousand, and then 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:45.599 the older um the the older like napoleonic Um war 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:48.400 games of old, the kind of thing that has been 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:50.800 the past time of people such as H. G. Wells, 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:54.120 who wrote a essentially a rule book for such miniature 0:04:54.160 --> 0:04:58.640 gaming and then was also a favorite pastime of Peter Cushing. Right, 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:01.520 you recently shared this deo with me where Cushing is 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:04.800 painting his little figurines. I guess it's Napoleonic Wars or 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:08.960 some similar temporal event where all these little uniformed figures 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:12.000 he's like posing them around barns and stuff that he's 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:14.400 gotten on his floor. I think it was a video 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:17.080 from the from the nineteen fifties that was done. Yeah, 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:19.200 it was. It was nineteen fifties, and yeah, he's really 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:21.200 getting into it, has a whole whole hobby set up, 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:23.080 and yeah, then he's laying them out on the floor 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:26.360 getting them into into position. Um, you know, a very 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:30.919 very historical based for sure. But yeah, just thinking about 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:33.040 this sort of thing, thinking about miniature gaming in general, 0:05:33.120 --> 0:05:36.880 and thinking about the clone Wars where you have on 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:42.039 one side a bunch of uh, you know, genetically identical 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:46.840 warriors going up against you know, armored robotic hords. I 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:50.000 couldn't help but think of the ants, the wars of 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:53.400 the ants. You know, it's amazing how much hymen opteran 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:57.160 conflict we can miss because you're just going about your business. 0:05:57.240 --> 0:05:59.960 Maybe you're doing something in your yard, you're hanging out 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:02.719 out in the sun or in the hammock or something, 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:05.840 and you don't even realize that there is literally a 0:06:05.880 --> 0:06:09.640 battle raging just a couple of feet from you around 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:12.919 the blades of grass. Oh. Absolutely, yeah. They the ants 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:16.880 are are waging their wars, they're defending their territories, um, 0:06:17.240 --> 0:06:19.960 and and we're talking about against other ants and not 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:25.279 even talking about their their various struggles against other species. 0:06:25.800 --> 0:06:28.000 And it's everywhere. We did not even think about our 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:31.560 aunts unless they actually invade our homes, and then then 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:35.000 we get hot and bothered about it. But I imagine 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:37.400 the most crucial question we have to consider before we 0:06:37.440 --> 0:06:41.200 proceed is can we really consider the conflict we see 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:46.440 between ant species between different ant colonies as warfare more 0:06:46.520 --> 0:06:48.920 or less in the human sense of the word. Well, 0:06:48.960 --> 0:06:52.080 I mean, in one sense you could say maybe pedantically 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:56.679 and obviously no, because it would necessarily fail to capture 0:06:56.760 --> 0:07:00.159 like the full range of human value and culture and 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:04.120 and passion that the company's conflict between humans. But on 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:06.800 the other hand, I think you could absolutely probably like 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:11.520 see some parallels in terms of like pure resource dynamics. Yeah, 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:13.800 I was thinking about this a little bit. Uh. Sometimes 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:17.640 you see war defined as a declared armed hostile conflict, 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:22.320 and of course the idea of ants actually declaring war 0:07:22.520 --> 0:07:25.800 on another group of ants is ridiculous because you're getting 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:29.200 into declarations of war. That's a human political reality and 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:32.400 is doctor Brundle would probably remind us insects are rather 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:35.480 short on politics. I mean, I think that that that 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:38.080 fails to capture even a lot of actual war in 0:07:38.120 --> 0:07:40.720 the human context, where a lot of wars are not 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:45.320 cold wars by the people carrying them out right. Another 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:49.120 issue too, is if we're talking about an armed hostile conflict, well, 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:52.240 ants don't actually take up arms in the human sense, 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:54.160 and of course they don't have to, because aunts have 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:57.360 a number of biological weapons and chemical weapons at their 0:07:57.400 --> 0:08:01.800 disposal that make make such tool will use unnecessary. And 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:04.120 of course we'll be running through some examples of of 0:08:04.160 --> 0:08:08.880 these bio weapons as we proceed through these episodes. However, 0:08:09.000 --> 0:08:13.200 we do tend to discuss these conflicts between ant colonies 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:17.440 between ant species as being a form of war something 0:08:17.480 --> 0:08:20.280 that we can think of as for as zoologist and 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:24.800 entomologist Sean O'Donnell pointed out on Serious Science, ants engage 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:29.040 in quote direct aggressive interaction between ants of different colonies. 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:33.200 They also engage in such conflict over resources, and as 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:38.319 a noted ant expert author of the Human Swarm tropical biologists, 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:41.600 Mark W. Moffatt has put it, or is quote the 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:46.440 concentrated engagement of group against group in which both sides 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:49.920 risk wholesale destruction. So it's easy to look at other 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:53.360 animals perhaps and say, well, cats don't wage war, dogs 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:56.160 don't wage war. It would be, for instance, kind of 0:08:56.280 --> 0:09:00.640 ridiculous to say that um lions are way ing war 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:04.560 against say an antelope. Right, yeah, I I think that 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:07.720 the the analogy would really fall short there. But for 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:10.240 the ant however, it gets a little, a little, a 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:13.360 little different. So Mofat contends that the case for ant 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:17.079 warfare is fairly convincing. It's not simply a matter of 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:20.360 applying the lens of human civilization to the behavior of animals. 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:23.440 What what they are doing and we humans have done 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:27.040 for thousands of years are both endeavors that entail quote 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:31.080 an astonishing array of tactical choices about methods of attack 0:09:31.400 --> 0:09:35.640 and strategic decisions about when and where to wage war. Now, 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:39.440 the parallel there gets especially interesting because while humans would 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:42.720 have to make tactical and strategic choices in in organized 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:46.160 conflict consciously, you know, they have to like use their 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:48.560 brains look at what's going on and try to judge. 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:51.480 I think, uh, I think we would have to say 0:09:51.520 --> 0:09:55.680 that the ant carries out its campaigns almost entirely on instinct. 0:09:56.120 --> 0:10:00.280 Like it the ant doesn't have strategic theories except it 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:05.240 naturally does by instinctive behavior. That's right. Yeah, they more 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:07.400 or less simply do. And we'll get into some of 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:09.839 the details of that here in a second. I want 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:12.280 to throw in that Douglas j Emlin, who wrote an 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:15.800 excellent book several years ago titled Animal Weapons uh he 0:10:16.200 --> 0:10:19.320 he uh, weighs in on this and says that, Okay, 0:10:19.360 --> 0:10:21.880 for the most part, animals do not fight battles or 0:10:21.960 --> 0:10:25.440 wars um and you know it, basically, he says, most 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:28.240 of the animal conflict that we see in the wild, 0:10:28.400 --> 0:10:31.120 it's ultimately more of a duel, you know, especially as 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.040 far as interest species contests go, you know, like male 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:37.440 fighting a male over a potential mate. But ants and 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:41.000 termites are are certainly examples of something that could be 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:43.800 a standout, you know, in which we do see this 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:49.000 kind of large scale war with high stakes for both sides. Um. 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:50.600 You know, I was thinking a bit about this too, 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:53.559 that you know, even these other scenarios lions versus antelopes 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:56.160 and all like, at best, we could maybe think of 0:10:56.160 --> 0:10:58.880 that as a skirmish, right, but certainly not a war. 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:03.000 Not certainly not a war or of of eradication. Yeah. 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:06.200 I would say that the conflicts between most animals you 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:09.560 see in nature are much more individual. They're less group oriented, 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:12.640 that they're less organized. Though at the same time that 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:17.080 brings up an interesting question about what what really counts 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:20.040 as an individual when you're talking about something like a 0:11:20.120 --> 0:11:25.240 colony of ants, because unlike say mammals or birds or something, 0:11:25.320 --> 0:11:28.880 answer a situation where within the colony, it gets harder 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:32.600 to make the case that the individual ant's body is 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:36.480 a is a like independent, autonomous agent, and it might 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:40.240 be better thought of as like one organ of the 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:44.480 the actual individual, which is the overall colony. Yeah. I 0:11:44.480 --> 0:11:46.000 think a lot of it comes down to the fact 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:48.360 that they are so I mean, they're use social insects, 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:51.600 and they're so connected that there there is this sense 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:54.560 of civilization to them. You know, they are you know, 0:11:54.559 --> 0:11:57.400 they're managing resources. In some cases, such with the leaf 0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:01.880 counter ant, they're engaging in agriculture. You know, they there's 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:04.920 this this whole system that is there that that makes 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:09.360 the argument for ant warfare a lot more convincing than saying, well, 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:13.920 this invasive species is waging a war on the native species. Yeah, 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:16.480 I mean it is out competing it for some resource. 0:12:16.520 --> 0:12:19.640 But it is not like this tight knit unit. It 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:22.760 is not a like a full blown colony. Now, obviously 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:26.200 nothing humans do is going to be comparable to something 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:30.280 in the ant world, but the similarities are pretty startling. 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:33.520 I want to read a quote from a wonderful two 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:37.360 thousand and eleven Scientific American article titled Ants and the 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:41.360 Art of War, and this is also by Mark W. Moffatt. Quote. 0:12:41.360 --> 0:12:44.000 Scientists have long known that certain kinds of ants and 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:48.359 termites form tight knit societies with members numbering in the millions, 0:12:48.640 --> 0:12:52.400 and that these insects engage in complex behaviors. Such practices 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:56.760 include traffic control, public health efforts, crop domestication, and, perhaps 0:12:56.840 --> 0:13:01.120 most intriguingly, warfare, the concentrated engagement of group against group 0:13:01.120 --> 0:13:04.400 in which both sides risk wholesale destruction. Indeed, in these 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:07.680 respects and others, we modern humans more closely resemble ants 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:10.680 than our closest living relatives, the apes, which live in 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:15.000 far smaller societies. So the main similarity between us and 0:13:15.040 --> 0:13:18.920 the ants is that we organize ourselves more so than 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:24.760 almost any other non insect animal right now. Biologically, of course, 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:28.040 we're much larger vertebrates. We have impressive brains that have 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:32.960 enabled us to achieve unequal technological accomplishments, including but not 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:36.480 limited to, the production of nineteen fifty four Is Them 0:13:36.920 --> 0:13:40.560 and Birdeye Gordon's nineteen seventy seven film Empire of the Ants. 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:43.800 You don't see the ants themselves making films this good. 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:48.480 That's true. Ant cinema is rather lacking, though I don't 0:13:48.480 --> 0:13:50.600 know if I've seen this Birdeye Gordon movie or not. 0:13:50.679 --> 0:13:52.559 Of course, Birt Eye Gordon has come up on the 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:55.319 show several times. He's sort of h MR a K 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:58.280 A Mr Big. He's the king of the force perspective effect, 0:13:58.400 --> 0:14:00.439 where you know, you take like a lizard and then 0:14:00.480 --> 0:14:02.960 you shoot it up close against the background and make 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:05.520 it say that it's a dinosaur. Yeah. I have to 0:14:05.520 --> 0:14:08.520 say I haven't seen Empire of the Ants either. I 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:11.600 mainly know it because it's referenced in a Warren Zevon song, 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:14.480 but it's a n seven release. That's that's pretty late 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:19.280 into in the bird Eye Gordon and Giant Animal rampaging world. 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:21.920 I would think last time I checked bird Eye Gordon 0:14:22.040 --> 0:14:25.400 was still alive. I think he is, oh well, still 0:14:25.400 --> 0:14:28.440 going at Yes, he's ninety seven years old. Alright, So 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:31.560 obviously ants can't actually top that. You know, they don't 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:34.120 have language, they don't have civilization in the sense that 0:14:34.160 --> 0:14:37.600 we do. Ants. However, they have a different way of 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:40.440 going about things. So for instance, they produce While we're 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:44.480 like a fifty fifty male female species, ants only produce 0:14:44.600 --> 0:14:49.000 males to serve as short lived reproductive drones, to fertile queens. 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:52.960 That's right, I mean ants are females basically. Yeah, the 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:57.160 vast majority of the colony consists of sterile females. And 0:14:57.160 --> 0:15:00.240 while the queen terminology, you know, if we talk about 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:03.440 the queen ant and it brings with it the legacy 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:08.360 of human centralized power structures. Ultimately, ants function without a 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:13.480 power hierarchy or a permanent leader. They are entirely decentralized. So, 0:15:13.560 --> 0:15:16.600 like you said earlier, combat decisions, they're not made by commanders. 0:15:17.080 --> 0:15:19.040 You know, if if this was a miniature war game, 0:15:19.080 --> 0:15:22.120 you wouldn't have like the commander piece that's essential for 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:24.280 all of this to take place. No, it's rather a 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:27.720 case of form intelligence. That is one of the hardest 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:30.240 things to keep in mind because there there's this natural 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:34.680 tendency we have to assume that something called the queen 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:37.160 is in charge. But yeah, when you're thinking about aunts, 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:39.760 you have to remember that basically ants are always at 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:42.440 war and the queen is never in command. The queen 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:45.240 doesn't tell the ants what to do. They are highly 0:15:45.240 --> 0:15:48.360 motivated to protect the queen. But that's kind of in 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:51.400 the same way that like you are highly motivated to 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:55.600 protect the most vulnerable parts of your body from injury, right, 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:58.920 like you'd protect your face and stuff. Like the queen 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:03.640 is there reproductive chances and that's why she is protected, right, 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:06.720 and she's she is very important. There's some passages in EO. 0:16:06.760 --> 0:16:10.440 Wilson's novel where where the tragedy of the fall of 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:13.800 their their queen is discussed and how this is a 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:17.080 you know, part of the peril that this key group 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:20.000 of ants finds themselves in. But ultimately, the wars of 0:16:20.040 --> 0:16:22.320 ants and the wars of humans they're often fought for 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:27.680 the same reasons. Territory, food, ideal dwelling spaces, and even labor. 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:30.640 So some ant species do in fact employ something that 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:32.800 we might think of as slave labor, and we'll come 0:16:32.840 --> 0:16:35.960 back to that as we go. But also ants deploy 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:40.640 various tactics depending on what is at stake. So, like 0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:44.320 you know, not every war is equal to the ant colony. 0:16:44.640 --> 0:16:48.240 There is um, there's a fluctuation in, you know, the 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:50.360 amount of effort that is put into it, how much 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:55.200 ant power is is put on the line, et cetera. However, 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:58.120 in his book The Human Swarm, Moffatt speaks a little 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:00.480 bit more about this, about the basic comparison in between 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:03.000 human and ant warfare, and he does he does write 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:06.920 the quote, if nothing else, remember this, comparing identical things 0:17:07.040 --> 0:17:11.080 is deadly boring. Making comparisons is most fruitful when parallels 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:15.080 are noticed between ideas or things or actions ordinarily treated 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:18.000 as distinct. Uh. And he discusses this at length in 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:20.440 that book, if if, if anyone wants to pick that 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:22.639 up and explore more. But I think this is also 0:17:22.680 --> 0:17:24.840 something that's important to keep in mind. Yeah, it's it's 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:26.679 not a one to one, but if it were a 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:29.000 one to one, we probably wouldn't be doing a podcast 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:31.680 about it, right, all right, we need to take a 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:33.680 quick break, but when we come back, we will talk 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:40.920 about aunt warriors in classic literature. Than all right, we're back. 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:44.240 So we spent the whole first portion of this episode 0:17:44.480 --> 0:17:48.040 talking about the idea of comparing ant warfare to human 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:51.520 warfare and uh, and to what, to what extent it's fair, 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:55.520 what extent it makes sense? And ultimately it's irrelevant because 0:17:55.640 --> 0:17:57.760 we still do it, and we've been doing it for 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:01.160 a very long time. We've been making that connection between 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:04.520 human warfare in ant warfare, perhaps for as long as 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:07.159 warriors have had a chance, uh, you know, to pause 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:10.359 on the battlefield and look down between their human feet 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:14.800 and see a smaller version of their campaigns playing out 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:17.760 in the dirt beneath them. For instance, if we look 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:21.760 back to the Iliad, the specialized warriors who serve the 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:25.840 mighty Akellyes are known as the Myrmidons. The aunt people 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:29.199 is the the literal translation of that. Now I know. 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:33.439 According to some mythological sources, the Mermandons who fight with 0:18:33.480 --> 0:18:36.800 Achilles actually were ants at some point. Isn't that right? 0:18:36.840 --> 0:18:41.760 They were like transformed into human warriors from their aunt origins. Yeah, 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:45.200 The tradition that we see in Ovid's metamorphosis, for example, 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:51.720 is that is that the gods transformed the ants into humans. Uh, 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:54.399 and that's why they have these these ant like uh 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:59.280 uh tendencies. They have this ant like tenacity because they 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:02.760 are essentially ants that were made human. But of course 0:19:02.800 --> 0:19:06.080 that was not the actual reality. These were these were 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:07.600 human troops, and we have to make some sort of 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:11.200 sense of it. Uh. I was reading a two thousand 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:14.560 tin paper published in the Classical World by Matthew Sears 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:18.159 titled Warrior Ants Elite Troops in the Iliad, and he 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:21.359 points out that massed fighting was probably the norm in 0:19:21.400 --> 0:19:24.160 the days of Homer, but that in this we get 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:27.880 into scholarly conflict over the idea of the hop light 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:32.000 revolution and the prin pre hop light and hop light warfare. 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:34.159 Now this refers to the Greek use of spears and 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:37.520 shields and the phalanx formation. So this is kind of 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:41.639 like an ant level um of of of cooperation that 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:45.760 stands in contrast to mass fighting and the dramatic single 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:49.200 combat episodes of the Iliad. So the basic idea here 0:19:49.359 --> 0:19:52.320 is that the Myrmidons as well as you know, opposing 0:19:52.359 --> 0:19:57.600 soldiers under AJAX might be understood as specialized warriors, professional 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:02.280 soldiers who use this type of tight formation with the 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:06.120 shields providing you know, absolute support for the unit and 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:09.000 uh and the offensive spears used in a very deliberate 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:11.879 manner as opposed to just a bunch of warriors running 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:15.240 out and going at it. So definitely keep the phalanx 0:20:15.240 --> 0:20:17.080 in mind, because we'll come back to it and discuss 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:19.720 it more when we get into ant tactics a bit. 0:20:20.160 --> 0:20:22.920 But basically, on both sides of the conflict described in 0:20:22.960 --> 0:20:25.119 the Iliad, the ideas that you would have had a 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:29.840 mix of such professional, highly trained fighters alongside more general 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:33.040 generalized troops, and of course this would remain a reality 0:20:33.040 --> 0:20:37.000 in warfare for a long time, the professional soldiers fighting 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:41.480 alongside the h you know, basically common commoners, common men 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:43.479 who have just been given arms or have taken up 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:47.200 arms in the conquest. Now in this series goes and 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:49.359 of course into a great deal more detail because it 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:52.480 is primarily concerned with the ancient world, but he actually 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:56.040 poses the question of whether ancient people's without special lenses 0:20:56.520 --> 0:20:59.160 would have been able to mark the similarities between human 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:02.919 and ant organize conflict and based on the work of others. 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:06.520 He says, yeah, you know, we look at the traditions 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:10.200 in Africa, Australia and New Guinea. Uh, in cases where 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:12.639 you have people who know who have not used specialized 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:17.560 gear to analyze ants, and they have long made these comparisons. Quote, 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:20.880 the warlike characteristics of ants would have been just as 0:21:20.880 --> 0:21:23.120 apparent to the eyes of the ancient Greeks as they 0:21:23.119 --> 0:21:26.080 were to throw and McCook. In short, the description of 0:21:26.080 --> 0:21:30.000 achilles men as aunt people maybe due to their resemblance 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:34.520 in terms of ferocity, uh, tactical ingenuity, unit cohesion, and 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:38.280 general belicocity to these insects, as as as observed by 0:21:38.280 --> 0:21:41.720 the ancients. Okay, so what makes them like ants? It's 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:45.919 that they are fierce, that they execute tactics effectively, that 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:49.520 they stick together and don't break up into individuals, and 0:21:49.600 --> 0:21:53.480 that they're very aggressive. Yeah they're not. Just yeah, I 0:21:53.480 --> 0:21:56.200 think the sticking together and like working as a as 0:21:56.240 --> 0:21:59.040 a unit is keyty Here. It's not the warfare of 0:21:59.160 --> 0:22:02.240 sort of you know, random battle. It's not the warfare 0:22:02.440 --> 0:22:05.720 of like the one hero fighting the other hero at 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:08.119 the at the at the walls of Troy. No, it 0:22:08.240 --> 0:22:13.080 is about tactics and in uniform performance exactly, and that 0:22:13.240 --> 0:22:15.800 is the advantage of the phalanx. Alright, So the next 0:22:15.920 --> 0:22:19.240 question folks might wonder is how long have Aunt's waged 0:22:19.320 --> 0:22:22.159 these wars? Or maybe you haven't, maybe you're not asking 0:22:22.160 --> 0:22:23.560 that question, but let me go and tell you. It's 0:22:23.560 --> 0:22:27.760 an interesting question with an interesting answer. Tell us the answer, Robert, 0:22:27.800 --> 0:22:29.800 All right, well, well, first of all, let's let's consider 0:22:29.840 --> 0:22:32.560 the big picture. First, we have to really stop and 0:22:32.680 --> 0:22:35.600 realize that we live in the world of the ant. 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:39.640 Because today the world is home to an estimated twenty 0:22:39.680 --> 0:22:43.760 two thousand species of a hant, and of those, only 0:22:44.119 --> 0:22:47.040 I've seen two different numbers for this, uh, twelve five 0:22:47.119 --> 0:22:51.679 hundred or perhaps thirteen thousand have been classified or described. 0:22:52.200 --> 0:22:55.160 So we're still talking thousands of ant species out there 0:22:55.200 --> 0:22:57.240 that we just you know, don't have a good hand line, 0:22:57.240 --> 0:23:00.920 maybe don't even have names for um. According to ted 0:23:01.000 --> 0:23:06.560 Are Shooltz in a paper on ant ancestors, ants probably 0:23:06.640 --> 0:23:12.680 account for fifteen of the terrestrial animal biomass today. So 0:23:12.840 --> 0:23:15.240 that means if you take all of the animals that 0:23:15.359 --> 0:23:18.000 live on land, and of course this doesn't include plants 0:23:18.040 --> 0:23:19.840