Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're
Speaker 1: bringing you an episode from the Vault. This is aunt
Speaker 1: War's Part one, originally aired on June twelve. Should we
Speaker 1: go right in, Let's do it. For years, the Trailhead
Speaker 1: nest had been protected by a ten thousand member force
Speaker 1: of its adult members or soldiers. A soldier's exoskeleton, twice
Speaker 1: the size of that of an ordinary worker is literally
Speaker 1: heavy armor, thick, tough, and hitted in places for resilience
Speaker 1: and strength. A pair of spines project backward from the
Speaker 1: mid section of the body to protect the waist. Spikes
Speaker 1: protect the neck, and the rear margin of the head
Speaker 1: is curved forward, forming a helmet. When attacked, the soldier
Speaker 1: can pull in her legs and antenna and tighten up
Speaker 1: the segments of her body, turning her entire surface into
Speaker 1: a shield. The ordinary Trailhead workers, while built for labor,
Speaker 1: were also available for combat. They served as the light infantry,
Speaker 1: using the swiftness and the agility of their supple bodies
Speaker 1: to dart in and out of enemy lines, seizing any
Speaker 1: leg or antenna available, and holding onto it until their
Speaker 1: nest mates could close in and grab another body part.
Speaker 1: When the adversary was finally pinned and spread eagled, others
Speaker 1: piled on to bite, sting or spray her with poison.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Off to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In
Speaker 1: today It's Ants, folks. That's right, this is going to
Speaker 1: be Ant Wars Episode one. Uh, the Ampire strikes Back.
Speaker 1: Perhaps I'm not sure. I haven't worked out that the
Speaker 1: full title yet, but yeah, we're gonna be taking a
Speaker 1: couple of episodes to look at the wars of the Ants,
Speaker 1: and it seemed ideal that we kick off with a
Speaker 1: cold reading from the novel ant Hill, a novel by E. O.
Speaker 1: Wilson which came out in so we were talking about
Speaker 1: this novel before we got started. It actually got some
Speaker 1: surprisingly good reviews. I was thinking about picking up a
Speaker 1: copy and reading it until I discovered that a significant
Speaker 1: portion of this novel is about human characters. And I
Speaker 1: was hoping with EO. Wilson, you know, especially in the past,
Speaker 1: we've talked about that video where he like plunges his
Speaker 1: hand into a nest of fire ants and beams with
Speaker 1: the most the most radiant joy as the ants all
Speaker 1: biden sting him. At the same time, I was hoping
Speaker 1: it would be all about ants, because if anybody could
Speaker 1: do ants as compelling central characters, I would think it
Speaker 1: would be E. O. Wilson. Yeah, I think I was
Speaker 1: looking at one review of it. There was glowing that
Speaker 1: said that they're about seventy pages in the novel that
Speaker 1: only E. O. Wilson could have written. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: and I think this gives everyone a little taste of that.
Speaker 1: And when we say, you know, surprisingly, you know great reviews,
Speaker 1: you know it's obviously EO. Wilson is a is a
Speaker 1: tremendous author. But generally he was he was associated with
Speaker 1: with nonfiction, uh, conveying oftentimes conveying science very effectively, um
Speaker 1: to a general audience. But of course fiction is a
Speaker 1: slightly different scenario. So you might expect even a very
Speaker 1: talented nonfiction writer, uh, you know, to to to perhaps
Speaker 1: stumble a bit in trying to create a work of
Speaker 1: fiction like this. Oh totally, that's what I mean. I
Speaker 1: didn't mean, like EO. Wilson's a dummy. I just meant
Speaker 1: that usually when somebody who's not primarily a fiction writer
Speaker 1: is like, yeah, I'll do a novel, it's it's not
Speaker 1: always great. Well, you know, the main in the main
Speaker 1: example that always comes to my mind is would be
Speaker 1: the the Tech Wars novels that were attributed to William
Speaker 1: Shatner that although I understand it was more of a
Speaker 1: ghostwriting scenario, it was in place and there was some
Speaker 1: some spiritual composition in there. But but I have to
Speaker 1: say it was not the tech Wars that inspired inspired
Speaker 1: me to to seek this topic out this week, but
Speaker 1: rather the Clone Wars um and and also the miniature
Speaker 1: board gaming in general. So my son and I recently
Speaker 1: ordered a copy of Fantasy Flight Star Wars Legion miniature Game,
Speaker 1: which is a miniature um war game in the tradition
Speaker 1: of things like say Warhammer, Warhammer forty thousand, and then
Speaker 1: the older um the the older like napoleonic Um war
Speaker 1: games of old, the kind of thing that has been
Speaker 1: the past time of people such as H. G. Wells,
Speaker 1: who wrote a essentially a rule book for such miniature
Speaker 1: gaming and then was also a favorite pastime of Peter Cushing. Right,
Speaker 1: you recently shared this deo with me where Cushing is
Speaker 1: painting his little figurines. I guess it's Napoleonic Wars or
Speaker 1: some similar temporal event where all these little uniformed figures
Speaker 1: he's like posing them around barns and stuff that he's
Speaker 1: gotten on his floor. I think it was a video
Speaker 1: from the from the nineteen fifties that was done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was nineteen fifties, and yeah, he's really
Speaker 1: getting into it, has a whole whole hobby set up,
Speaker 1: and yeah, then he's laying them out on the floor
Speaker 1: getting them into into position. Um, you know, a very
Speaker 1: very historical based for sure. But yeah, just thinking about
Speaker 1: this sort of thing, thinking about miniature gaming in general,
Speaker 1: and thinking about the clone Wars where you have on
Speaker 1: one side a bunch of uh, you know, genetically identical
Speaker 1: warriors going up against you know, armored robotic hords. I
Speaker 1: couldn't help but think of the ants, the wars of
Speaker 1: the ants. You know, it's amazing how much hymen opteran
Speaker 1: conflict we can miss because you're just going about your business.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're doing something in your yard, you're hanging out
Speaker 1: out in the sun or in the hammock or something,
Speaker 1: and you don't even realize that there is literally a
Speaker 1: battle raging just a couple of feet from you around
Speaker 1: the blades of grass. Oh. Absolutely, yeah. They the ants
Speaker 1: are are waging their wars, they're defending their territories, um,
Speaker 1: and and we're talking about against other ants and not
Speaker 1: even talking about their their various struggles against other species.
Speaker 1: And it's everywhere. We did not even think about our
Speaker 1: aunts unless they actually invade our homes, and then then
Speaker 1: we get hot and bothered about it. But I imagine
Speaker 1: the most crucial question we have to consider before we
Speaker 1: proceed is can we really consider the conflict we see
Speaker 1: between ant species between different ant colonies as warfare more
Speaker 1: or less in the human sense of the word. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, in one sense you could say maybe pedantically
Speaker 1: and obviously no, because it would necessarily fail to capture
Speaker 1: like the full range of human value and culture and
Speaker 1: and passion that the company's conflict between humans. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, I think you could absolutely probably like
Speaker 1: see some parallels in terms of like pure resource dynamics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this a little bit. Uh. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you see war defined as a declared armed hostile conflict,
Speaker 1: and of course the idea of ants actually declaring war
Speaker 1: on another group of ants is ridiculous because you're getting
Speaker 1: into declarations of war. That's a human political reality and
Speaker 1: is doctor Brundle would probably remind us insects are rather
Speaker 1: short on politics. I mean, I think that that that
Speaker 1: fails to capture even a lot of actual war in
Speaker 1: the human context, where a lot of wars are not
Speaker 1: cold wars by the people carrying them out right. Another
Speaker 1: issue too, is if we're talking about an armed hostile conflict, well,
Speaker 1: ants don't actually take up arms in the human sense,
Speaker 1: and of course they don't have to, because aunts have
Speaker 1: a number of biological weapons and chemical weapons at their
Speaker 1: disposal that make make such tool will use unnecessary. And
Speaker 1: of course we'll be running through some examples of of
Speaker 1: these bio weapons as we proceed through these episodes. However,
Speaker 1: we do tend to discuss these conflicts between ant colonies
Speaker 1: between ant species as being a form of war something
Speaker 1: that we can think of as for as zoologist and
Speaker 1: entomologist Sean O'Donnell pointed out on Serious Science, ants engage
Speaker 1: in quote direct aggressive interaction between ants of different colonies.
Speaker 1: They also engage in such conflict over resources, and as
Speaker 1: a noted ant expert author of the Human Swarm tropical biologists,
Speaker 1: Mark W. Moffatt has put it, or is quote the
Speaker 1: concentrated engagement of group against group in which both sides
Speaker 1: risk wholesale destruction. So it's easy to look at other
Speaker 1: animals perhaps and say, well, cats don't wage war, dogs
Speaker 1: don't wage war. It would be, for instance, kind of
Speaker 1: ridiculous to say that um lions are way ing war
Speaker 1: against say an antelope. Right, yeah, I I think that
Speaker 1: the the analogy would really fall short there. But for
Speaker 1: the ant however, it gets a little, a little, a
Speaker 1: little different. So Mofat contends that the case for ant
Speaker 1: warfare is fairly convincing. It's not simply a matter of
Speaker 1: applying the lens of human civilization to the behavior of animals.
Speaker 1: What what they are doing and we humans have done
Speaker 1: for thousands of years are both endeavors that entail quote
Speaker 1: an astonishing array of tactical choices about methods of attack
Speaker 1: and strategic decisions about when and where to wage war. Now,
Speaker 1: the parallel there gets especially interesting because while humans would
Speaker 1: have to make tactical and strategic choices in in organized
Speaker 1: conflict consciously, you know, they have to like use their
Speaker 1: brains look at what's going on and try to judge.
Speaker 1: I think, uh, I think we would have to say
Speaker 1: that the ant carries out its campaigns almost entirely on instinct.
Speaker 1: Like it the ant doesn't have strategic theories except it
Speaker 1: naturally does by instinctive behavior. That's right. Yeah, they more
Speaker 1: or less simply do. And we'll get into some of
Speaker 1: the details of that here in a second. I want
Speaker 1: to throw in that Douglas j Emlin, who wrote an
Speaker 1: excellent book several years ago titled Animal Weapons uh he
Speaker 1: he uh, weighs in on this and says that, Okay,
Speaker 1: for the most part, animals do not fight battles or
Speaker 1: wars um and you know it, basically, he says, most
Speaker 1: of the animal conflict that we see in the wild,
Speaker 1: it's ultimately more of a duel, you know, especially as
Speaker 1: far as interest species contests go, you know, like male
Speaker 1: fighting a male over a potential mate. But ants and
Speaker 1: termites are are certainly examples of something that could be
Speaker 1: a standout, you know, in which we do see this
Speaker 1: kind of large scale war with high stakes for both sides. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I was thinking a bit about this too,
Speaker 1: that you know, even these other scenarios lions versus antelopes
Speaker 1: and all like, at best, we could maybe think of
Speaker 1: that as a skirmish, right, but certainly not a war.
Speaker 1: Not certainly not a war or of of eradication. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I would say that the conflicts between most animals you
Speaker 1: see in nature are much more individual. They're less group oriented,
Speaker 1: that they're less organized. Though at the same time that
Speaker 1: brings up an interesting question about what what really counts
Speaker 1: as an individual when you're talking about something like a
Speaker 1: colony of ants, because unlike say mammals or birds or something,
Speaker 1: answer a situation where within the colony, it gets harder
Speaker 1: to make the case that the individual ant's body is
Speaker 1: a is a like independent, autonomous agent, and it might
Speaker 1: be better thought of as like one organ of the
Speaker 1: the actual individual, which is the overall colony. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of it comes down to the fact
Speaker 1: that they are so I mean, they're use social insects,
Speaker 1: and they're so connected that there there is this sense
Speaker 1: of civilization to them. You know, they are you know,
Speaker 1: they're managing resources. In some cases, such with the leaf
Speaker 1: counter ant, they're engaging in agriculture. You know, they there's
Speaker 1: this this whole system that is there that that makes
Speaker 1: the argument for ant warfare a lot more convincing than saying, well,
Speaker 1: this invasive species is waging a war on the native species. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it is out competing it for some resource.
Speaker 1: But it is not like this tight knit unit. It
Speaker 1: is not a like a full blown colony. Now, obviously
Speaker 1: nothing humans do is going to be comparable to something
Speaker 1: in the ant world, but the similarities are pretty startling.
Speaker 1: I want to read a quote from a wonderful two
Speaker 1: thousand and eleven Scientific American article titled Ants and the
Speaker 1: Art of War, and this is also by Mark W. Moffatt. Quote.
Speaker 1: Scientists have long known that certain kinds of ants and
Speaker 1: termites form tight knit societies with members numbering in the millions,
Speaker 1: and that these insects engage in complex behaviors. Such practices
Speaker 1: include traffic control, public health efforts, crop domestication, and, perhaps
Speaker 1: most intriguingly, warfare, the concentrated engagement of group against group
Speaker 1: in which both sides risk wholesale destruction. Indeed, in these
Speaker 1: respects and others, we modern humans more closely resemble ants
Speaker 1: than our closest living relatives, the apes, which live in
Speaker 1: far smaller societies. So the main similarity between us and
Speaker 1: the ants is that we organize ourselves more so than
Speaker 1: almost any other non insect animal right now. Biologically, of course,
Speaker 1: we're much larger vertebrates. We have impressive brains that have
Speaker 1: enabled us to achieve unequal technological accomplishments, including but not
Speaker 1: limited to, the production of nineteen fifty four Is Them
Speaker 1: and Birdeye Gordon's nineteen seventy seven film Empire of the Ants.
Speaker 1: You don't see the ants themselves making films this good.
Speaker 1: That's true. Ant cinema is rather lacking, though I don't
Speaker 1: know if I've seen this Birdeye Gordon movie or not.
Speaker 1: Of course, Birt Eye Gordon has come up on the
Speaker 1: show several times. He's sort of h MR a K
Speaker 1: A Mr Big. He's the king of the force perspective effect,
Speaker 1: where you know, you take like a lizard and then
Speaker 1: you shoot it up close against the background and make
Speaker 1: it say that it's a dinosaur. Yeah. I have to
Speaker 1: say I haven't seen Empire of the Ants either. I
Speaker 1: mainly know it because it's referenced in a Warren Zevon song,
Speaker 1: but it's a n seven release. That's that's pretty late
Speaker 1: into in the bird Eye Gordon and Giant Animal rampaging world.
Speaker 1: I would think last time I checked bird Eye Gordon
Speaker 1: was still alive. I think he is, oh well, still
Speaker 1: going at Yes, he's ninety seven years old. Alright, So
Speaker 1: obviously ants can't actually top that. You know, they don't
Speaker 1: have language, they don't have civilization in the sense that
Speaker 1: we do. Ants. However, they have a different way of
Speaker 1: going about things. So for instance, they produce While we're
Speaker 1: like a fifty fifty male female species, ants only produce
Speaker 1: males to serve as short lived reproductive drones, to fertile queens.
Speaker 1: That's right, I mean ants are females basically. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: vast majority of the colony consists of sterile females. And
Speaker 1: while the queen terminology, you know, if we talk about
Speaker 1: the queen ant and it brings with it the legacy
Speaker 1: of human centralized power structures. Ultimately, ants function without a
Speaker 1: power hierarchy or a permanent leader. They are entirely decentralized. So,
Speaker 1: like you said earlier, combat decisions, they're not made by commanders.
Speaker 1: You know, if if this was a miniature war game,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have like the commander piece that's essential for
Speaker 1: all of this to take place. No, it's rather a
Speaker 1: case of form intelligence. That is one of the hardest
Speaker 1: things to keep in mind because there there's this natural
Speaker 1: tendency we have to assume that something called the queen
Speaker 1: is in charge. But yeah, when you're thinking about aunts,
Speaker 1: you have to remember that basically ants are always at
Speaker 1: war and the queen is never in command. The queen
Speaker 1: doesn't tell the ants what to do. They are highly
Speaker 1: motivated to protect the queen. But that's kind of in
Speaker 1: the same way that like you are highly motivated to
Speaker 1: protect the most vulnerable parts of your body from injury, right,
Speaker 1: like you'd protect your face and stuff. Like the queen
Speaker 1: is there reproductive chances and that's why she is protected, right,
Speaker 1: and she's she is very important. There's some passages in EO.
Speaker 1: Wilson's novel where where the tragedy of the fall of
Speaker 1: their their queen is discussed and how this is a
Speaker 1: you know, part of the peril that this key group
Speaker 1: of ants finds themselves in. But ultimately, the wars of
Speaker 1: ants and the wars of humans they're often fought for
Speaker 1: the same reasons. Territory, food, ideal dwelling spaces, and even labor.
Speaker 1: So some ant species do in fact employ something that
Speaker 1: we might think of as slave labor, and we'll come
Speaker 1: back to that as we go. But also ants deploy
Speaker 1: various tactics depending on what is at stake. So, like
Speaker 1: you know, not every war is equal to the ant colony.
Speaker 1: There is um, there's a fluctuation in, you know, the
Speaker 1: amount of effort that is put into it, how much
Speaker 1: ant power is is put on the line, et cetera. However,
Speaker 1: in his book The Human Swarm, Moffatt speaks a little
Speaker 1: bit more about this, about the basic comparison in between
Speaker 1: human and ant warfare, and he does he does write
Speaker 1: the quote, if nothing else, remember this, comparing identical things
Speaker 1: is deadly boring. Making comparisons is most fruitful when parallels
Speaker 1: are noticed between ideas or things or actions ordinarily treated
Speaker 1: as distinct. Uh. And he discusses this at length in
Speaker 1: that book, if if, if anyone wants to pick that
Speaker 1: up and explore more. But I think this is also
Speaker 1: something that's important to keep in mind. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: not a one to one, but if it were a
Speaker 1: one to one, we probably wouldn't be doing a podcast
Speaker 1: about it, right, all right, we need to take a
Speaker 1: quick break, but when we come back, we will talk
Speaker 1: about aunt warriors in classic literature. Than all right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So we spent the whole first portion of this episode
Speaker 1: talking about the idea of comparing ant warfare to human
Speaker 1: warfare and uh, and to what, to what extent it's fair,
Speaker 1: what extent it makes sense? And ultimately it's irrelevant because
Speaker 1: we still do it, and we've been doing it for
Speaker 1: a very long time. We've been making that connection between
Speaker 1: human warfare in ant warfare, perhaps for as long as
Speaker 1: warriors have had a chance, uh, you know, to pause
Speaker 1: on the battlefield and look down between their human feet
Speaker 1: and see a smaller version of their campaigns playing out
Speaker 1: in the dirt beneath them. For instance, if we look
Speaker 1: back to the Iliad, the specialized warriors who serve the
Speaker 1: mighty Akellyes are known as the Myrmidons. The aunt people
Speaker 1: is the the literal translation of that. Now I know.
Speaker 1: According to some mythological sources, the Mermandons who fight with
Speaker 1: Achilles actually were ants at some point. Isn't that right?
Speaker 1: They were like transformed into human warriors from their aunt origins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: The tradition that we see in Ovid's metamorphosis, for example,
Speaker 1: is that is that the gods transformed the ants into humans. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that's why they have these these ant like uh
Speaker 1: uh tendencies. They have this ant like tenacity because they
Speaker 1: are essentially ants that were made human. But of course
Speaker 1: that was not the actual reality. These were these were
Speaker 1: human troops, and we have to make some sort of
Speaker 1: sense of it. Uh. I was reading a two thousand
Speaker 1: tin paper published in the Classical World by Matthew Sears
Speaker 1: titled Warrior Ants Elite Troops in the Iliad, and he
Speaker 1: points out that massed fighting was probably the norm in
Speaker 1: the days of Homer, but that in this we get
Speaker 1: into scholarly conflict over the idea of the hop light
Speaker 1: revolution and the prin pre hop light and hop light warfare.
Speaker 1: Now this refers to the Greek use of spears and
Speaker 1: shields and the phalanx formation. So this is kind of
Speaker 1: like an ant level um of of of cooperation that
Speaker 1: stands in contrast to mass fighting and the dramatic single
Speaker 1: combat episodes of the Iliad. So the basic idea here
Speaker 1: is that the Myrmidons as well as you know, opposing
Speaker 1: soldiers under AJAX might be understood as specialized warriors, professional
Speaker 1: soldiers who use this type of tight formation with the
Speaker 1: shields providing you know, absolute support for the unit and
Speaker 1: uh and the offensive spears used in a very deliberate
Speaker 1: manner as opposed to just a bunch of warriors running
Speaker 1: out and going at it. So definitely keep the phalanx
Speaker 1: in mind, because we'll come back to it and discuss
Speaker 1: it more when we get into ant tactics a bit.
Speaker 1: But basically, on both sides of the conflict described in
Speaker 1: the Iliad, the ideas that you would have had a
Speaker 1: mix of such professional, highly trained fighters alongside more general
Speaker 1: generalized troops, and of course this would remain a reality
Speaker 1: in warfare for a long time, the professional soldiers fighting
Speaker 1: alongside the h you know, basically common commoners, common men
Speaker 1: who have just been given arms or have taken up
Speaker 1: arms in the conquest. Now in this series goes and
Speaker 1: of course into a great deal more detail because it
Speaker 1: is primarily concerned with the ancient world, but he actually
Speaker 1: poses the question of whether ancient people's without special lenses
Speaker 1: would have been able to mark the similarities between human
Speaker 1: and ant organize conflict and based on the work of others.
Speaker 1: He says, yeah, you know, we look at the traditions
Speaker 1: in Africa, Australia and New Guinea. Uh, in cases where
Speaker 1: you have people who know who have not used specialized
Speaker 1: gear to analyze ants, and they have long made these comparisons. Quote,
Speaker 1: the warlike characteristics of ants would have been just as
Speaker 1: apparent to the eyes of the ancient Greeks as they
Speaker 1: were to throw and McCook. In short, the description of
Speaker 1: achilles men as aunt people maybe due to their resemblance
Speaker 1: in terms of ferocity, uh, tactical ingenuity, unit cohesion, and
Speaker 1: general belicocity to these insects, as as as observed by
Speaker 1: the ancients. Okay, so what makes them like ants? It's
Speaker 1: that they are fierce, that they execute tactics effectively, that
Speaker 1: they stick together and don't break up into individuals, and
Speaker 1: that they're very aggressive. Yeah they're not. Just yeah, I
Speaker 1: think the sticking together and like working as a as
Speaker 1: a unit is keyty Here. It's not the warfare of
Speaker 1: sort of you know, random battle. It's not the warfare
Speaker 1: of like the one hero fighting the other hero at
Speaker 1: the at the at the walls of Troy. No, it
Speaker 1: is about tactics and in uniform performance exactly, and that
Speaker 1: is the advantage of the phalanx. Alright, So the next
Speaker 1: question folks might wonder is how long have Aunt's waged
Speaker 1: these wars? Or maybe you haven't, maybe you're not asking
Speaker 1: that question, but let me go and tell you. It's
Speaker 1: an interesting question with an interesting answer. Tell us the answer, Robert,
Speaker 1: All right, well, well, first of all, let's let's consider
Speaker 1: the big picture. First, we have to really stop and
Speaker 1: realize that we live in the world of the ant.
Speaker 1: Because today the world is home to an estimated twenty
Speaker 1: two thousand species of a hant, and of those, only
Speaker 1: I've seen two different numbers for this, uh, twelve five
Speaker 1: hundred or perhaps thirteen thousand have been classified or described.
Speaker 1: So we're still talking thousands of ant species out there
Speaker 1: that we just you know, don't have a good hand line,
Speaker 1: maybe don't even have names for um. According to ted
Speaker 1: Are Shooltz in a paper on ant ancestors, ants probably
Speaker 1: account for fifteen of the terrestrial animal biomass today. So
Speaker 1: that means if you take all of the animals that
Speaker 1: live on land, and of course this doesn't include plants
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, but all the animals that live
Speaker 1: on land, you weigh them all together, this estimate would
Speaker 1: say fifteen of that is just ants. Yeah, And apparently
Speaker 1: in areas where they're especially prominent, you could maybe be
Speaker 1: looking at they because they and they thrive everywhere. Like
Speaker 1: certainly they're they're you know, around the you know, the
Speaker 1: the Equatorial belt, they're going to be especially active. But
Speaker 1: they thrive everywhere except Antarctica and as well as the
Speaker 1: occasional far flung and inhospitable island. Otherwise the ants just
Speaker 1: have it all locked down. Now, that's an amazing estimate,
Speaker 1: and I do want to be fair. I've been reading
Speaker 1: around and I think there are some disputes about exactly
Speaker 1: how much biomass ants account for the Different people have
Speaker 1: different estimates. Um. But one other estimate I came across
Speaker 1: that was very interesting. It was quoted in a in
Speaker 1: a BBC article I was reading about aunt biomass It
Speaker 1: quotes Francis Ratniqus, who is a professor of apriculture at
Speaker 1: the University of Sussex, and Ratnius was trying to address
Speaker 1: the question of what ways more all the ants or
Speaker 1: all the humans. Uh, And there have been different answers
Speaker 1: to this question. Ratnix thinks that, well, now, probably if
Speaker 1: you weighed up all the humans, the humans way more
Speaker 1: than the ants um But that hasn't always been the case. Definitely,
Speaker 1: Ratnique says, if you went back a few thousand years,
Speaker 1: ants would have far outweighed the humans. But as human
Speaker 1: populations have grown exponentially, especially in recent centuries, that changed.
Speaker 1: Ratnique thinks it was probably right around the late seventeen
Speaker 1: hundreds or maybe a little bit before that, that the
Speaker 1: total weight of humans on Earth suddenly became larger than
Speaker 1: the total weight of ants. So around the time of
Speaker 1: American into it's the humans overtook the ants. Wow. Uh,
Speaker 1: here's another figure. And again these are all estimates, so
Speaker 1: you know, don't you know, have any particular factor like
Speaker 1: tattoo in your body regarding this. But the Field Museum
Speaker 1: has a wonderful ant page uh ants section of their website,
Speaker 1: and they they point they make the claim that in
Speaker 1: the tropics, ant biomass outweighs all vertebrate life two to one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that that emphasizes that like the percentage of ants,
Speaker 1: as biomass is going to be heavily dependent on environment. Right,
Speaker 1: So around the equatorial regions where they're even more abundant,
Speaker 1: they might they might massively outweigh humans. I mean the
Speaker 1: take home is that that basically, no matter how often
Speaker 1: we fail to notice ants in our environment, they are
Speaker 1: an extremely successful species. By you know, by some accounts,
Speaker 1: they are the most successful insect on the planet, which
Speaker 1: really puts them, uh, you know, in consideration for the
Speaker 1: most sessiful animal on the planet. Oh yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: insects dominate the animal world, and especially especially the terrestrial
Speaker 1: animal world, and if ants dominate the insects, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you could absolutely make a good case there.
Speaker 1: But the funny thing is you have to imagine, like
Speaker 1: all other organisms or families of organisms on Earth, there
Speaker 1: was a time when ants were newcomers on the evolutionary scene.
Speaker 1: And they can't always have had this this uh you know,
Speaker 1: occupied this elevated station. That's right. They were not an
Speaker 1: overnight success. Uh. Ants evolved and estimated one forty two,
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty eight million years ago, so they
Speaker 1: are ultimately a product of the Jurassic But but yeah,
Speaker 1: they were not an instant hit uh. I was reading that.
Speaker 1: You know, scientists consider that they're probably like a modest
Speaker 1: success at first. You know, um ants were doing their thing,
Speaker 1: but they weren't just blowing up. But then something changed.
Speaker 1: Flowering and fruiting plants evolved an estimated one million years ago.
Speaker 1: And what this did is it transformed the energy economy.
Speaker 1: Insects suddenly had in it were not suddenly, but insects
Speaker 1: progressively had an entirely new food source to adapt to,
Speaker 1: um a whole slew of new food sources. And so
Speaker 1: they did. And ants, which were again probably just a
Speaker 1: modestly successful life form at best earlier, suddenly exploded, filling
Speaker 1: out these these various niches in the in the ecosystem.
Speaker 1: They adapted to a host of evolutionary niches and then
Speaker 1: spread across the two supercontinents of Eurasia and Gondwana. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to imagine the scene of the first time some
Speaker 1: ants discovered it fallen fruit. What a small moment that
Speaker 1: would have been. Almost it's almost like an ant Garden
Speaker 1: of Eden story. Yeah, And and it's like it's just
Speaker 1: basically like all levels of this new fruit flower economy,
Speaker 1: like the ants are there to figure out how to
Speaker 1: make it work, and you know, and and of course
Speaker 1: steadily evolve into these various species. Is that um to
Speaker 1: take advantage of it in various ways. Now, as Schiltz
Speaker 1: points out, we don't have much evidence of ants from
Speaker 1: the first half of their existence. Not until the mid
Speaker 1: Cretaceous do we see their fossil remains. But the evidence
Speaker 1: we have is pretty incredible. In nineteen sixty six, E. O.
Speaker 1: Wilson and others identified the fossil remains of a Cretaceous
Speaker 1: ant species that was trapped in amber from ninety two
Speaker 1: million years ago. But then there there there have been
Speaker 1: some more recent exciting findings. Ancient Burmese amber from Myanmar
Speaker 1: gives us even older evidence. I was reading about a
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen study from Rutgers that was at the
Speaker 1: time of that study dated to ninety nine million years ago.
Speaker 1: And according to Philip Bardon of the Insect and Evolution
Speaker 1: Lab and Jessica l Where of the Department of Biological
Speaker 1: Sciences at Rutgers University Newark, what what the contents of
Speaker 1: this chunk of amber show us is a frozen act
Speaker 1: of ant warfare. Oh, I see it. They're in a tangle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's two ants battling it out, duking it out,
Speaker 1: trapped forever in this uh, this droplet of amber. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm imagining a scene where the scientists from Jurassic Park
Speaker 1: drill into this amber and they use it to clone
Speaker 1: dangerous Jurassic fruit right as they get the stomach content.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that joke connected. Okay whatever, Um no, no,
Speaker 1: I give it to your your cooking there. So the researchers,
Speaker 1: though they do not go in that direction. What the
Speaker 1: What they say is that the ants trapped here belonged
Speaker 1: to early Aunt lineages. They're ultimately distinct from modern ants,
Speaker 1: so they're not really direct ancestors of modern ants. But
Speaker 1: in their study they present evidence that that these ancient
Speaker 1: ants were social and and they were you know, engaging
Speaker 1: in this kind of uh you know, collective conflict. Another
Speaker 1: bit of amber, they point out, contains some twenty one
Speaker 1: worker ants, and this is from a time period in which,
Speaker 1: again ant fossil evidence is super rare, So they say,
Speaker 1: to get twenty one in one blow suggested they were
Speaker 1: already you know, very social, working together. So we're looking
Speaker 1: at a good one million years of ant warfare based
Speaker 1: on this, you know, at least memo or less, lining
Speaker 1: up with the advent of flowering and fruiting plants, with
Speaker 1: true dominance of the ants being reached some sixty million
Speaker 1: years ago. Now, other things, of course evolved as well, uh,
Speaker 1: including some of their various features. Uh. Interestingly enough, some
Speaker 1: of the ancient ants were rather brutal looking, even more
Speaker 1: brutal looking than they look today. For instance, there were
Speaker 1: the hell ants uh so named because they feature many
Speaker 1: characteristics that some might you know, consider unusual or hellish. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I found out because because you linked it to this
Speaker 1: one called Lingua Mermix, vladdie, And I was looking at
Speaker 1: that name for a second, thinking, wait, Vladdie, that that
Speaker 1: can be? Is it? Is it? Vlad is it Vladim Paler?
Speaker 1: It is named for Vladim Paler because it has this
Speaker 1: U unique head structure where it has um Uh. It's
Speaker 1: kind of difficult to describe because it's it has like
Speaker 1: this paddle like projection on it and uh and X
Speaker 1: ray uh imaging reveals that it was most probably filled
Speaker 1: with sequestered metals to make it like you know, fortified uh,
Speaker 1: and that it would have worked in tandem with scithelike
Speaker 1: mandibles to pin and potentially puncture soft bodied prey. So
Speaker 1: it was you know, there's this real you know, bear
Speaker 1: trap of a head on this thing. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: images of it now. It is a brutal spike coming
Speaker 1: out of the head. Yeah. Now, this isn't to say
Speaker 1: there aren't some really gnarly ant heads around today. We'll
Speaker 1: get back to some of those later on. But one
Speaker 1: of the important tacoms from all of this, and this
Speaker 1: is something that Sean O'Donnell points out in that that
Speaker 1: serious science article on ant wars. He points out that
Speaker 1: there's an important shift in the weaponry of ants across time.
Speaker 1: So long ago, vertebrates were probably the biggest threat to ants,
Speaker 1: so they were more equipped to deal with them via
Speaker 1: things like a powerful sting. But as time passed and
Speaker 1: they spread her across the world, they become more and
Speaker 1: more successful. Pressure on each other becomes more prevalent. In
Speaker 1: other words, the endless aunt wars become more important for
Speaker 1: shaping their evolution than the dinosaurs, the birds, and the
Speaker 1: various mammals that preyed on them. So they used to
Speaker 1: be they used to have to be more worried about
Speaker 1: and eaters and armadillos getting in there and vacuum them
Speaker 1: up with the snout but over time their real adversaries
Speaker 1: become the rival. I'm an opter in colonies exactly. So
Speaker 1: ultimately some AUNT lineages end up keeping their sting. For example,
Speaker 1: the bullet ant whose bite ranks as a four. That's
Speaker 1: the maximum score on Schmidt's sting pain index um. There
Speaker 1: I was reading a description. This is by Justin Oschmidt,
Speaker 1: the entomologist who came up with this system of measuring
Speaker 1: UH the stings. He described it as quote pure intense,
Speaker 1: brilliant pain, like walking over flaming charcoil with a three
Speaker 1: inch nail and embedded in your heel. Yeah. I've read
Speaker 1: descriptions of this one as well. The only other thing
Speaker 1: that I recall being compared to this level of pain
Speaker 1: with the sting was the tarantula hawk, which is a
Speaker 1: type of stinging wasp, but apparently it is just like
Speaker 1: unimaginable in terms of an insect thing. So that's an
Speaker 1: example of of ants that have kept their impressive bioweapon um,
Speaker 1: but others lost it entirely, and in some cases, UH
Speaker 1: these systems adapted into chemical weapons systems to be used
Speaker 1: against other ants, and we'll discuss those later on in
Speaker 1: this UH this look at ant warfare because the end
Speaker 1: of it is up taking a different form because ultimately
Speaker 1: you're trying to solve different problems at different scales with
Speaker 1: different enemies. Okay, it looks like it's time for us
Speaker 1: to take a break, but we'll be right back with
Speaker 1: more than all Right, we're back. So we've now come
Speaker 1: to the poor of our our episodes here where we're
Speaker 1: going to really get into the endless wars of ant
Speaker 1: kind and the sorts of tactics they employ on the battlefield.
Speaker 1: And we're probably not going to be able to to
Speaker 1: make it all the way through the this next section
Speaker 1: without having to stop the episode and come back in
Speaker 1: part two. But if everything goes according to plan, you're
Speaker 1: only gonna have to wait like a day for the
Speaker 1: ant wars to continue. Now, the most important fact to
Speaker 1: drive home first is that naturally there are so many
Speaker 1: species of ants to consider, and that you know a
Speaker 1: specific species. Tactics are then also going to change depending
Speaker 1: on circumstances, and this is just going to be the
Speaker 1: nature of war. Moffett rights that some ants succeed in
Speaker 1: battle by being on constant offensive, and he draws an
Speaker 1: interest in comparison here to a sixth century BC Chinese
Speaker 1: military general Son Zoo, who also noted that quote, rapidity
Speaker 1: is the essence of war, right, I mean, so much
Speaker 1: depends on your ability to not give your opponent time
Speaker 1: to react act effectively. Right, and so like the key
Speaker 1: A variety of aunt to draw a comparison here to uh,
Speaker 1: he says, would be the army ants that inhabit a
Speaker 1: warm regions around the world, as well as ages marauder
Speaker 1: ants as prime examples here. Uh. For these aunt legions,
Speaker 1: hundreds or even millions of these warriors will advance in
Speaker 1: a tight phalanx against their AUNT adversaries. Now, I guess
Speaker 1: we should try to examine what that would mean for
Speaker 1: ants as opposed to human warriors. So, if you're like
Speaker 1: an ancient Greek phalanx, this would involve, say, staying together
Speaker 1: in a tight formation with a wall of shields out
Speaker 1: in front that's sort of like prevents the enemy from
Speaker 1: reaching you, and that you would have trained to be
Speaker 1: able to move forward and thrust with spears in an
Speaker 1: organized fashion, all altogether minimizing the chances for the enemy
Speaker 1: to to break into you while you're pushing into them. Yeah, Like, basically,
Speaker 1: the difference between like just two hordes, like just slamming
Speaker 1: into each other. And how thing something more and more
Speaker 1: in keeping with really what we've seen in the tradition
Speaker 1: of tabletop war gaming. Uh, for anyone out here there
Speaker 1: is actually played any of these games, you can certainly relate.
Speaker 1: But even if you've looked at one, you get the
Speaker 1: sense of order, and I think that's what draws players
Speaker 1: into it. Right. You have all these these units, these
Speaker 1: little individual soldiers that are part of different units, and
Speaker 1: these units are working together. You're having to employ a
Speaker 1: strategy to deploy them and then move them around and
Speaker 1: counter the movements of your adversary. And again, for a
Speaker 1: human this is done by you know, either the godlike
Speaker 1: figure that looms over the gaming table or it it
Speaker 1: is the domain of a commander. But for the ants
Speaker 1: it is it is just that pure swarm intelligence that
Speaker 1: allows it to take place. Now, Momft points out for
Speaker 1: that for for human forces just advancing in a phalanx,
Speaker 1: part of the issue here is you need to know
Speaker 1: where you're going, right, which is obvious, your your your
Speaker 1: your your phalonx needs to have a target or goal
Speaker 1: or purpose like cutting its way through the defenses in
Speaker 1: order to get to the gates of Troy, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. But some hands ants, however, just kind of
Speaker 1: stick to this roving phalanx tactic, just a roving decimating
Speaker 1: horde that that brings to mind. Oh, I'd say like
Speaker 1: the Tyra the Tyrant Army from forty Warhammer forty thousand
Speaker 1: MND made an example of this, you know, or various
Speaker 1: sort of alien bio adversaries in science fiction where it's
Speaker 1: just it's just this massive horde that's working in unity
Speaker 1: and uh, it's difficult to stop. Right. However, human forces,
Speaker 1: you know, tend not to go this route. They tend
Speaker 1: to depend on scouts as well to determine where to
Speaker 1: apply that offensive pressure, where to send your phalanx, and
Speaker 1: some ants do this as well. Some species will send
Speaker 1: out a small team of workers to serve as scouts.
Speaker 1: But this too is risky. Is this risky strategy for
Speaker 1: ants because a team of scouts they have to report
Speaker 1: back to the colony in order for a larger force
Speaker 1: too then return to obtain that food source that they
Speaker 1: just scouted. And this is true of human scouts as well.
Speaker 1: In a military scenario, we might well consider the case
Speaker 1: of imperial probe droids for example, right, and Empire strikes back,
Speaker 1: you send out these droids and yet one may discover
Speaker 1: a rebel base on Hoth, but it actually needs to
Speaker 1: survive and then it's and then get word back to
Speaker 1: the Empire so they can deploy their their A T eighties,
Speaker 1: you know, their their massive army. Likewise, the Empire would
Speaker 1: find this to be a better method send out the
Speaker 1: probe droids, because we can't send the A T eighties
Speaker 1: to every world just in case there's a rebel base there.
Speaker 1: So basically for the for the Empire, for the ants
Speaker 1: as well, it basically means that you can depend on
Speaker 1: you can send out fewer ants and cover a larger
Speaker 1: area in order to scout out potential targets in the
Speaker 1: case of the ants, potential food. Now I can imagine though,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of considerations that must be built
Speaker 1: into ant behavior based on not wasting resources on like
Speaker 1: you know, on you know, going somewhere where there's no
Speaker 1: longer anything useful to be done, right, Yeah, because there's
Speaker 1: always the risk that the enemy will move before a
Speaker 1: larger force can arrive, or that that food source that
Speaker 1: was scouted out it's just not going to be there
Speaker 1: when you're true your aunt troops roll in and uh
Speaker 1: in all of this for the for the ants, pheromones
Speaker 1: are key for their communication. Here, the Scouts use this
Speaker 1: to tag the food source for the larger force to find.
Speaker 1: So so the pheromones of the ants here would be
Speaker 1: the imperial probe droids dab day about kind of message
Speaker 1: that it sends out. Yeah, basically like the pheromones end
Speaker 1: up serving as communication lines. Some of it rights that
Speaker 1: uh quote the workers of the army ants or marauder
Speaker 1: ants can immediately summon any help they require because a
Speaker 1: slew of assistance are marching directly behind them. The result
Speaker 1: is maximal shock and awe. So much like in more
Speaker 1: large scale conflicts, you would have to you'd have to
Speaker 1: in some way ensure that communication in lines are able
Speaker 1: to remain open for forces to be effective exactly. And
Speaker 1: again here you know, the for the ants it is
Speaker 1: is largely this realm of of touch and smell. It's
Speaker 1: the pheromonal information that's so key. So really I feel
Speaker 1: like this at this point in the podcast, I think
Speaker 1: we do have a pretty broad view of like what's
Speaker 1: going on with on with the ant war effort about
Speaker 1: how how troops are distributed, how communication is taking place,
Speaker 1: and then how offensive pressure can be applied to different
Speaker 1: areas depending on the need. Oh, but there is so
Speaker 1: much more ant battle to talk about. Yes, indeed there is. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we were only able to get through like the
Speaker 1: first half of our material here because there's a lot
Speaker 1: more about well just about like the at the individual level,
Speaker 1: there's a lot more about like the how like aunt
Speaker 1: jaws work, the power of ant bioweapons, it's etcetera. But
Speaker 1: then also when you get into the Marauder ant specifically,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of wonderful work, uh regarding just
Speaker 1: how they carry out their campaigns and to what extent
Speaker 1: we can compare uh, these these acts of ant conquest
Speaker 1: to actual human battles. Well, I can't wait to come
Speaker 1: back next time and fight on with the Myrmadons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: more ants, more allusions to UH star Wars and various
Speaker 1: UH tabletop gaming scenarios. It's gonna be gonna be a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. In the meantime. If you would like
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of stuff to blow your mind,
Speaker 1: you know where to find us, and that is wherever
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Speaker 1: helps us out in the long run. Huge thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
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Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
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