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Transcript

Ants! Part 2! · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, chuck here real quick with some bad news
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: and sad news. Uh. Sketch Fest this year in San Francisco,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: which is where we were gonna have our first live
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: show in two years here in a couple of weeks,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: has been postponed. I believe they're looking to postponed it
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: by a whole year and kind of rebooked the whole
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: festival ideally, but you know, with what's going on around
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: the country with Omicron, they didn't feel like they could
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: press forward, and UH, as bummed as we are, we
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: think it's the right move as well. So, uh, if
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: you have tickets, just stay tuned for an announcement. I
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: think you will either probably be able to well I'm
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: not exactly sure what's gonna happen with them, maybe a
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: refund maybe if you hold onto them, they're good for
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: next year because we're probably gonna look in the same theater.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: But listen up for announcement soon. And again, all apologies,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: we're super sad about it. We're really looking forward to
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: getting back out there again. But until further notice, live
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: shows are still on hold. All right, now here we
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: go with the show. Welcome to stuff you should know
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: A production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and this is
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Part two about ants, which is
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: just knocking our socks off, and we we we released
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: this one on the first one on Tuesday. Chuck, my
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: socks are still off in its Thursday, that's right. And
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: you know, if you listen to part one, we tried
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: to throw in some amazing ant facts and I think
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: we I think we came through there, but most of
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: that was a little bit of the nuts and bolts.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I think Part two has got a little bit more
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: wow factor because we talk a lot about a lot
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: more even about the social structure of these amazing insects. Yeah.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: So ants are great, great example of social speed, social
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: insect like bees, um, some wasps, but I think there's
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: plenty of solitary wasps too. But let's say, like bees,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: they really kind of resemble bees in that sense. Um.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: And despite you know how many ants there are and
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: how many bees there are, um, apparently social insects um
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: only make up something like two percent of all insects species.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: The rest are um solitary or anti social or drifters,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing. So um, at the heart of
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: any uh social insect society is the queen and usually
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: chuck the who the whole thing is so hierarchical. There's
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: just like one queen. Yeah, this is this is the
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: one part that tripped me up a little bit as
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: far as they're as as far as that being a
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: benefit for their survival, I would think, like, hey, more queens,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: more eggs, like there should be you know, not all queens,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: because obviously I get that queens need a lot of
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: special care. Um, I mean, I guess let's talk about it.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Because queens get get fed. One reason that makes them
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: the queen is that they're the only sexually reproductive female
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: and that's the only thing she does is mate and
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: lay tons and tons of eggs. Uh. An army aunt
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: queen can lay up to three hundred thousand eggs in
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: a in a few days. Uh. And they're they're bigger,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: like they're just they basically sit around, they mate, they
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: lay eggs, and they get fed a really protein rich diet,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: so they grow up to like, you know, three or
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: four times the size of all the other ants. Yeah.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: And so with the queen, um, they're they're like you
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: said that One of the big differences are The difference
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: UM is that they're they're bigger than other um female ants,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: which are worker ants. Genetically, they're basically the same, it's
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: just that they're much much bigger, which means UM somehow,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I think also from that protein rich diet. They're also
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: um they have ovaries that function as well, so they're
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: able to reproduce. But that's basically the only two differences.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And that just goes to show you that any um
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: worker egg can be raised into a queen, right and
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: we'll see, you know, cases where that might happen. Another
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: difference is they live a lot longer. The queen ants
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: of the Black Garden aunt can live up to thirty
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: years apparently, Uh, female workers live about a year. And
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: I guess we can talk a little bit about the males.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: The poor male aunt, uh, they only live a week.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: They are hatched from unfer They don't even bother to
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: fertilized eggs. For the males, they had from unfertilized eggs,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: whereas all females had from fertilized eggs. And the males,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: you know, they did their thing. They're there too to
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: impregnate the queen and then they die. There's sex. Sex
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: slaves is what they are. Yeah, and and David points out,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: you know, Dave Russ helped us with this. He said, basically,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: almost any ant that you see is probably a female ant. Yeah,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: not just because, um, the workers are responsible for doing everything.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: But like you said, the lifespan of male land is
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: so short, the chances of you seeing one are pretty slim,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: although as we'll see, there are some some times where
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: they're on such full spectacular display that you actually may
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: have seen male lands before. Sure. Yeah, we'll get to
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: that weirdness in a minute. But the females are the
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: workers that you know. It's like, uh, where was wonder
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: woman from? Uh? Amazonia? Amazonia. It's kind of like the
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: society there. It's just it's all these ladies making things
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: happen as a big group, all in service to this queen.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: And the workers do everything. They've feed and care for
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: the young, they feed and care for the queen. They
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: go out and get the food, they maintain that nest
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: in the colony, which we'll talk about. It's just remarkable
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: what they do. Uh. They're the police force, they're the army,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: they're the custodians. They do everything. Yeah, so like everything
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with um eating and laying eggs.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: That's that's that's the workers doing all that stuff. It's
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: pretty cool. And depending on the species, sometimes the workers
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: are um more specialized than another species. Sometimes they'll be
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: like major workers who are much larger UM than the
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: minor workers, so they'll be the ones that go out
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: and like forage and maybe defend the nest while the
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: minor workers, the smaller ones, are left behind to tend
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: to the the larva and the pup a and um
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: and basically raise the next generation. So there's there can
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: be like specialization of what you do as an ant
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: depending on your size or how you were raised. That's right,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: and so uh, it's a very strict castiste and basically
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: um there's no like working your way up the ladder.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: It seems like you kind of have your job. You're
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: happy to do it. Um Ants are very happy, emotional
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: little insects, right, Yeah, they really wear their hearts on
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: their sleeves. You can tell if an ant is having
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: a bad day. But the good thing about it is
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: you can cheer them up pretty pretty easily. To just
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: hold your finger out lit him climb up on your finger.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: They find it so delightful and if you have a
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: little honeydew in your pocket, you can really turn their
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: day around. Uh. Now, you know we said we mentioned
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: the males just basically impregnate the queen then die, but
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: I didn't really quite get this part about the genetics
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: of the chromosomeal genetics. So basically, a male is just
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: an egg that has a genome from it his mother
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: from the queen. Usually the queen um a female is created,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: so like that would mean that all unfertilized eggs are males,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: and then the queen comes along and fertilizes some select ones.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: And I think it's actually dependent on what the workers
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: point out. I think the workers actually decide how many
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: new female workers are needed compared to how many males
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: are are needed. And then the queen comes along and
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: fertilizes some proportion of those unfertilized male eggs, and then
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: those become workers female workers. And then in some cases
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: when there's not a queen, say a queen died or
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: something like that, a colony would find itself up the creek.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: But apparently there's plenty of ants species where the workers
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: can actually lay unfertilized male eggs to raise a generation
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: of males that can mate with a queen that the
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: um that the workers produce as well, so the workers
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: can keep a colony from dying off if the queen dies. Yeah. Yeah,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: After I saw that some of these queens can live
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: thirty years, I just became paranoid about like accidentally killing
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: a queen. But I think that probably doesn't happen because
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: they're never out there to be stepped on, right, No,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: it's it's you pretty much won't have to invade a
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: nest like you're an exterminator if you're killing the queen.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Oh man, But that's what they do. I mean, that's
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: what they're trying to go after the queen. So yeah,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: we're we have um a mole problem in my yard.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: And I'm just like, I guess we have a mole
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: problem because I'm certainly not gonna let somebody come along
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: and drop m eight s into these mole holes and
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: blow them up. But luckily I found a service that
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: uses something called mole scram and it's just kind of
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: like an irritant, but it doesn't actually hurt them in
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: any way. They just don't want to be around it.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna give that one a try, because they
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: will mess up your lawn really quickly. I thought you're
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: gonna say, a guy comes by with a flute, I
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: wish leads them down to your neighbor's out. I just
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: did our pipe Piper episode as a select so I
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: heard it recently and it's really good. But the first
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: twenty minutes is really odd. It's like oddly like we're
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: like challenging one another and it's just really weird. And
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: then I don't know, we're just like showing off to
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: another You'll just have to listen to It's it's pretty interesting,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: but it really it really um comes out on top.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: It's a good episode. Interesting, that's not the stuff you
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: should know way, I know, That's what I'm saying. It's
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: it's weird. It's a weird start join episode, but usually
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: shrink in the face of competition. That's all right. We
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: don't challenge each other. You get very strange, all right.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: I guess we need to get to the nests here. Um,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: this is kind of some of the most remarkable stuff
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: that you're ever gonna see. I saw this one. Do
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: yourself a favor go to YouTube and I can't remember
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: what the search term was, but like amazing, uh aunt
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: colony or something like that, and it's like a three
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: minute video where they found uh They wanted to research
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: what these things look like below ground, and so they
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: pumped um concrete into the hole. I don't know where
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: this was. It took ten tons of concrete to fill
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: this thing, and then they let it sit for a
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: month and then they you know, excavated or whatever like
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: you would a fossil and dig around it and they
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: dug out what ended up being. It looked like about
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: the size of a Little League baseball in field, twenties
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: six ft deep, a hundred and seventy ft across, and
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: it was one of the most unbelievable things I've ever seen.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: It looked like, literally like an architect had designed it.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Um they were talking about the efficiencies of you know,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: every tube was like it was the shortest route to
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: get to the next thing. It was like it looked
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: like it had been purposefully designed that way. And it's
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: just the the DNA of these ants that know how
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: to do this stuff. So, yeah, you you mentioned something
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: important that the tunnels and the connections they make between
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: all these chambers, they do tend to be like the
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: shortest route between them, and ants also apparently will will
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: um burrow on these really kind of steep angles, but
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: they're at the angle of repose, which is the steepest
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: angle that's something like pile of dirt or a pile
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: of sand can maintain without collapsing. And somehow ants just no, like, oh,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: this is the angle I need to be to be
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: um digging at. Yeah, I saw that one thing you sent, uh,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: and I guess we can talk about the force chains here.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting. But um, when they were studying these ants,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: they thought maybe like maybe they're doing like a game
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: of Jinga when they're making these tunnels where they they
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: feel a little bit and kind of touch the block
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: which in this case or little individual grains of sand
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: or dirt or whatever, to see if it would weaken
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: the structure. And I think after the end of this
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: experiment they were like, no, they're not they're not doing that.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: They are just coded to do this. Yeah, And they
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: were like, we have no idea how ants know what
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: little grains of sand or dirt to pull out and
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: what ones they shouldn't because their load bearing grains. But
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: they just do and they're really successful at it. And
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: what they what they somehow are aware of, is that
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: there are things called what you said, force chains, where
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: if you follow like a force chain of soil or
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: dirt underground, like in a cross section of ground, um,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: those are the things that are holding the soil in place.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: And not all of the pieces or grains of dirt
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: or sand are responsible for holding the soil in place.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: So you could conceivably move one and leave another in place,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: and that that column of sand or dirt above is
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: going to stay. In tech somehow ants know what grains
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: are load bearing and what grains aren't. And so when
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: they're doing this, they're actually removing, um the sands that
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: that aren't part of the force chain. And when they
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: do chuck, it actually reinforces the structure of the force
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: chain that it diverts it to the outside of the
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: tunnel they're digging, which just makes it that much stronger.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: And there and again they're not just kind of testing
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: it like a game of jinga like that would make sense,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: and I see why they thought that might be. What's
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: happening is like they push a little bit to see
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: if anything starts to give, it's again, it's just like
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty million years of practice. Yeah. And
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: because they're so good at at creating these burrows and
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: tunnels and chambers that that not only UM maintained, but
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: also actually reinforced the force chains underground. UM like an
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: ant colony, a subtraining and colony might hold up for
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: decades once they dig it out. I felt terrible when
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: I saw this thing being pumped full of concrete. I
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: didn't know if it was vacant or you know, there
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: was some pretty decent pile of dirt on top. But um,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: I know you made the point with that stuff he
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: sent over that it's sort of like the tip of
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: the iceberg. If you see a little ant hill in
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: your neighborhood here in the United States, it's you know,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: twelve inches across and like sixtright inches. I there's a
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: lot more going on under the surface. Yeah, I mean
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: tens of feet underground. Like you said, the size of
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: a little league field laid out on its side, tipped
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: up on its end, and buried underground. That's enormous. Yeah,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: I mean this thing was huge. It was really really
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: something Okay, chuck. So we're starting to get a little
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: worked up. I think we need to melow out again.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Do you want to take a break, Yeah, let's do it. Okay,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: we'll be right back everybody, all right, So we would
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: you with a little bit on these ant colonies in
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: the nest and what's going on underground. I mentioned at
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: the beginning of episode one, these army ants who don't
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: root down in a specific place. They're one of the
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: only nomadic species, and they go miles and miles, which
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: is a long long way for a little tiny ant,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: up to a million at a time, and to go
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: to these places, they need to eat a lot of food,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: and they basically make what are temporary encampments out of themselves,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of like fire ants make a raft
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: out of themselves. These guys make a bivouac out of themselves. Yeah.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: They make a big I mean, look this up again
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: with these pictures. It's a it looks like a big
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: ant ball, but I guess it's hollow on the inside, right, Yeah,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: And then underneath you've got a bunch of different kinds
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: of worker ants um raising and directing where to where
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: to fertilize, and feeding and creating a new generation of
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: worker ants, and then after that generation is raised to adults,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: they break down their bivouac and DeCamp and just keep moving. Unbelievable,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: truly remarkable. They also can form super colonies. I know
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: that there's a um one kind of ant. It's an
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Argentinian ant that they don't do this in Argentina, but
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: in Europe they there is one super colony that goes
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: up the coast from Italy to Spain for thirty seven
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: hundred miles. That is all technically one, you know, it's
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: like one big. It's like the Pando of ants. They
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: just get together with their friends and they're like, hey,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: I know these people are like behind me by ten ft.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: You want to meet them? And then that linked up
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: for thirty seven miles. Yes, all from Italy to Spain
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: to northwest Spain. It's just astounding. And you said something
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: really important. You said that they don't this Argentinian aunt
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: doesn't do that back in Argentina, and um they looked
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: into why, and apparently the reason why is because back
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: in Argentina they're very genetically diverse, so that that neighbor
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: ten feet away is basically an enemy because all of
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: these ants are trying to preserve their queen's line as
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: as best they can, So another nest is just a
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: totally different genetic line, so it's a it's an enemy.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: But when they find land somewhere new, like say Italy
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: or Spain or whatever, that's a much less genetically diverse group.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: So as it reproduces, they form nearby colonies that are
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: pretty similar to the original colony or the last colony.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: And so you have these massive super colonies that are
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: super cooperative because there are basically just extensions of the
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: queen's genetic line. Wow. Yeah yeah. And apparently ants also
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: get from places like Argentina to Italy and have spread
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: throughout the world largely thanks to humans who use like
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: soil and sand as ship's ballast. And then when you
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: get to the next place, you unload the ballast and
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: there's all those ants you dug up from the last
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: place you just set sail from. Wow, I don't know
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: that that's how they gotten around. That's how they think
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: that the uh, the red imported fire ant came here.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: All right, So that's pretty good. Here's another remarkable thing
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: about ants. Uh Ants don't fly. Generally, everyone knows that
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: ants don't have wings. But if a colony is super
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: successful and there are too many ants and they're out
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: growing their own living conditions, they will just grow wings
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: and fly up in the air males and females and
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: have a big mid air right, That's that's what it is. Yeah,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: for sure. They grow wings and they say, all right,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: we're gonna have wings now everyone. I know we don't normally,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: but we're getting too big, so we're all gonna grow wings.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Then let's go up and fly in the air and
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: have sex. So so um, when the when the colony
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: gets too big, there's some sort of signal that the
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: workers pick up on. They're like, oh, things are getting
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: a little crowded here. I'm not sure what it is.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Nobody is sure what it is at the moment, but
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: there's some signal they pick up on, and so they
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: start raising a generation of queens, of virgin queens called princesses,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: and those princesses um fly off on this Usually it's
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: not really actually a day, but in some places like
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: the UK, they celebrated as flying aunt d a kind
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: of like how you know when um uh cicadas come
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: up after like seventeen years here in the States. I
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: get the impression it's kind of like that, although it
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: happens every year. Um. And if it's hu it out,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: if it's hot out and it rained the night before,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: there's a good chance you're gonna see swarms of flying
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: ants having air sex. Like you were saying, um, but
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: what those are different virgin queens and they're going as
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: far away from their their nest as possible because that
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: increases the likelihood that they're going to find, um, some
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: of the generations of winged male drones that were raised
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: in other nests, and they're going to have sex, and
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: then they're going to go off and found their own
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: nests after that. Now that they've been now that they've
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: gotten some sperm, that's right, And they can store the
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: sperm for quite a long time. In some cases, the
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: queen leafcutter ant can store viable sperm for up to
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: twenty years and just eat it out a little one
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: little bit at a time. And these were dave used
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: and just keep fertilized in generation after generation of eggs. Uh.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: And I don't think we said the name of this
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: air sex there. Actually it's called nuptial flights. Yeah. I
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: remember in the Firefly episode they had like nuptial gifts. Yeah.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: I was like, we've talked about that somewhere. I looked
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: it up. It was definitely fireflies. It's pretty amazing. And
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: then after that, you know, the males, as always, they
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: die off, and then hopefully you got a bunch of
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: new colonies. Yeah. If so, this is like the one
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: time the queen is off on her own for about
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: two or three weeks. She's like busy founding an entirely
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: new colony. Um. There's nobody there to feed her. Um.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: She's just laying a bunch of eggs and she's choosing
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: which or fertile, which to fertilize, which not. She's probably
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: fertilizing most of them because she needs a lot of
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: workers right then, and not very many male drones to
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: have sex with, so she's basically just laying in fertilizing
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: worker eggs, hatches them herself, and then once she successfully
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: has a generation or two of workers under her belt,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: now her colonies got a pretty good chance of becoming
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: stable because the workers can start to take over. She
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: can do what she does, which is lay hundreds to
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: thousands or hundreds of thousands of lay eggs every day,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: that's right. So if you ever see ants flying around,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: you know what's going on. Yeah, and they're they're they're not.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Don't confuse them with termites. Apparently they do bear some similarities,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: but if you look closely, you can you can tell
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: the difference. Like just the color alone is a dead giveaway. Yeah,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: I think termites are usually kind of white. Yeah, but
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: the infestation in your house, it's it's probably termites, Yeah,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: because the ants are flying around outside. They don't want
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: to be inside right now, not for their nuptial flight,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: that's right. So that must be like a pretty lonely
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: and scary two or three weeks for that that new queen,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: you know, I would say, So, I didn't get a
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: good sense of what the sort of survival rate for
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: that was. I didn't either. I'll bet it's all over
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: the place, because again, there's like ten thousand to fourteen
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: thousand species of ant, you know. Yeah, but it seems
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: like a big deal when it happens, when they finally
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: reached that they're carrying capacity or whatever, and they're like,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: all right, we gotta do this thing. It seems like
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: it's a. It's a big deal to kind of split
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: up that colony. One thing I didn't see is if
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: you could make a bard of um winged ants like
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: you could a swarm of bees, because they have, would
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: be really impressive. Oh that just makes me itchy just
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: thinking about it. So maybe we should talk a little
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: bit about the leaf cutter ant. Uh. If you see
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: videos of the leaf cutter, you've if you've seen any
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: documentary on ants, they probably talked a lot about the
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: leaf cutter because those are the ones that you know,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: literally cut the leaf with those mandibles and you see them,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: you know, it looks like they gotta looks like they
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: got a carpet knife. And how cleanly they cut through
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: that Christmas paper. It's really neat, uh leaf and then
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: one bit of leaf at a time, they're marching that
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: stuff out of there. Yeah, and I mean they these
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: leaves are enormous compared to the bodyway. But again, remember
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: ants are super strong, and leaf cutter ants in particular
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: can be very strong. They we talked about how um
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: sometimes workers are divided up into different specialties. Leaf cutters
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: are one of those where they have majors. They're the
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: biggest and the strongest of all of them, so they
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: carry enormous leaves compared to their body um. And they
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: actually are basically like cutting down paths like machetes um
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: to to clear a path for the smaller ones. The
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: media and then the miniums that try the media do
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: carry a lot of the leaves. But the little miniums,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: those little guys are just the farmers, uh, and they
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: tend to this fungus. And this is you know, it's
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: pretty cool enough that they take these leaves, they cut
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: them up, and they transport them over these distances, uh,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: considering how heavy they are. But the really remarkable thing
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: about the leaf cutter is that they are just as
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: the other ants um kind of raise the cattle of
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: these little apods. These are actual farmers of a fungus
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: and they have the symbiotic relationship with this fungus that
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: they farm underground. Yeah, so when they cut these leaves,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: they're they're fertilizing the fungus with these leaves to to
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: let them decompose and let the fungus basically eat the leaves.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: The adults act really um drink the sap from the
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: leaves because it's it's sweet. But they don't actually leave
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: the leaves. They leave the leaves for the fungus. And
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: the reason that they grow fungus and like, there's really
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: no better word to describe what they do than farm.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: They farm this fungus. They tend to it, they heal
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: it when it's sick, they know how to harvest it,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: they know how to get it to grow just right. Um,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: the reason that they farm this fungus is because it
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: produces a food that the ants harvest to feed their young,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: to raise their young on. So symbiotic is right because
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: they definitely want this fungus to be as healthy as possible.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: So the fungus really thrives in the presence of these ants,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: and the fungus in turn provides the ants with food
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: for their young, but also in some cases chuck um
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: antibiotics like ana microbials that that the fungus produces the
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: ants will coat them their bodies with and it will
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: prevent them from being infected as well. Yeah, and not
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: only that, if they if they need to split off
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: they don't like growings and fly up and have arab
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: nuturals or whatever, they just leave. But just like you
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: would carry the a sour dough mother, uh to your
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: to your new bakery. They actually carry a big chunk
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: of that fungus over to start their new crop in
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: their new home. That's so cool. It's amazing, it really is,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: especially if you imagine the fungus having a face and
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: talking right and also being really grateful for the help.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: I think in the in the in the movie they did,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: in the animated film they did. I think of it
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: as kind of like looking like have you ever seen
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: that movie basket Case? Have I seen what was that? No, terrible,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: terrible b horror movie from like the late seventies, yea,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: like the guy carried his brother around in a basket.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: I don't think I saw that, but I think I
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: remember that when I worked at Vision Video in college.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: So bad. It's really really bad, But it looks kind
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: of like a little piece of fungus that you would
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: carry to a new ant cole. This is what kept
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: flashing through my head. I wish you would get out
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: of my head. But I need to look at that
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: poster or that movie box because it's it's in my
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: brain somewhere. I just can't call it up. Let's let's
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: watch that movie together tonight. All right, let's do it.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: I'll truf butter. Oh man, you're making me hungry. You
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: first you wanted a twinkie, Now you want some popcorn
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: with truffle butter. Alright, what I really want to do
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: is take a break and then we will finish up
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: all about ants at least for now, unless we said,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: he come back and to this well again and we'll
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: talk about how they communicate via these pheromones right after this. Okay, Chuck,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: So I think we said at the top of the
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: first episode that pheromones are basically they may be the
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: thing that ants use to to um to to carry
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: out just about all of their individual behavior, which collectively,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: if you put millions of ants together doing the same thing,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: knowing what they're supposed to do, much more complex behaviors emerged.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: But it seems to largely come down to these pheromones,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: which are kind of like since um that the ants
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: pick up kind of like noses using their antenna instead.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like a language almost two. Because they're communicating.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: I mean we should also say that they also uh,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: they can like drum on their abdomen to raise an alarm.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: They can make different sounds like crickets. Uh, they can
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: they can rub different parts of their body. They can
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: rub their legs against their exoskeleton, is called stridulation. They
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: can vibrate their mandibles. So they do sort of speak
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: in some ways and here in some ways, But it
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: seems like it seems almost secondary to what's going on
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: with this this pheromone thing. Yeah, because there's just so
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: many different pheromones, and they produce pheromones from a special
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: scent gland um and the they you I don't know
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: how they differentiate pheromones when they're producing them, but different
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: It seems like they have different pheromones for different things
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: that they're trying to signal, like there's an alarm signal. Um.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: They use pheromones to recruit some ants to go do
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: something like if if one's maybe tending to the nest
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: and another one needs help tunneling, it will it will
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: create some pheromones signal and recruit the other aunt to
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: come help. It um. They mark territory with it um.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: They will, uh, they will use it to discourage rivals,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: like if somebody's trying to lay eggs or cannibalize eggs.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: They can use pheromones for that kind of stuff. Basically
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: almost all of their communications seems to be pheromones, and
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: that communication is really varied and wide. Yeah. So a
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: great example Dave uses is if there's an intruder, if
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: like a spider comes upon an ant nest, the ants
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: that see the spider come in that are I guess,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: you know, these soldier ants standing guard near the opening.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: They will start to admit the alarm pheromone I guess,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: along with beating on their abdomens uh for this alarm vibration,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: and then it becomes sort of like a game of telephone.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: The next closest ants here this stuff. Some of them might,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: depending on what their job is, rush up to help
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: if they're like soldier ants or you know, or guard
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: ants that will help guard the nest. Others run back
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: and they admit pheromones to tell everyone else, and then
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: they all start emitting pheromones, and it's essentially like a
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: volume knob going up until everyone knows what's happening, or
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: until the emergency is over or both. Yeah, and the
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: emergency is signaled as over because the pheromones start to
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: ail off. And one of the things about pheromones that
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: we understand is that they're volatile organic compounds, which means
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: they dissipate fairly quickly because again they're volatile at room
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: temperature in the air. Um So as long as you
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: don't have a bunch of ants all pumping out this
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: warning pheromone at the same time, the volume is going
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: to start to dissipate and turn down, and eventually the
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: the emergency subsides, and so the ants respond to pheromones,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: so their response to the pheromone is going to subside
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: as well, and everything will go back to normal because
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: the emergency is over right. So if you've ever uh
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: and this happens to me, I don't have an ant
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: problem here, but when we go to the lake sometimes, uh,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: we have ant problems there because it's out in the
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: middle of the woods, of course. But I will, you know,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: clean up really good, I think at the end of
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: the night, and if I leave a crumb of a
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Twinkie out there, I'll come back the next morning just
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: infested with these long lines of ants. And I'm always like,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: how do they know it's there? How do tell everyone
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: else it's there? And now I know it's pheromones. It's
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: the same thing as if the spider invades, some ant
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: sees this twinky crumb and amidst this pheromone, it's like, hey, everybody,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: there's some twinkie over here. Uh, you know, come eat
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: and it eats a little bit and then amidst a pheromone.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: And that what's kind of remarkable is the pheromones. Um.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: It's not just a pheromone like they differ. They can
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: differ what the pheromone is in the intensity of it
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: to tell everyone, like what kind of food it is,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: or how much food there is, and how many of
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: you should come and try to eat the crumb. Yeah,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: there's no way that the ants at your lakehouse haven't
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: developed a special pheromone for twinkies if you're leaving them
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: out that much. No, so the and but just like
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: with the emergency, like the the um, those other descriptions
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: not just foods here, but this kind of food or
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: this much food that can be um that can be
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: described by like variations in the intensity. So if there's
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: a lot of food, you know, of the ants really
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: going to exclaim that there's a bunch of food with pheromones,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: it's gonna attract more ants and they're going to exclaim,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: and just like with that emergency alarm, the volume is
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: going to be turned up. And then because it's a
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: volatile organic compound, as the food depletes, the ants that
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: are coming along and grabbing the food are going to
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: leave a more and more muted exclamation, so that that
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: trail is going to eventually dissipate and no ants going
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: to follow it anymore because there's no food there anymore. Yeah,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, it literally takes the place of the ant
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: yelling back, hey, there's a lot of food, and then
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: the last ant saying, hey, we pretty much ate everything.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: It's parties over. Yeah. Like they can't do that, So
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: they use the pheromones, right, and they think that pheromones Again,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: it's really tough to to overstate the importance of them
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: for for every kind of ant behavior. And there's a
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: there's a m I'm not quite sure what what field
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: that belongs to, but there's a concept called stigmer g
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: which basically says that UM it describes a behavior or
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: a trait or an action that's carried out based on
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: some sort of signal that's left there. And so ants
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: really respond to things like um if a litter made
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: or a nest made is doing something, another ant is
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: much more likely to do that same thing, and they
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: think it's because the a signal is left. Every time
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: and AUNT does something, it leaves a signal. Whether it's
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: not doing it on purpose, it's not thinking about this,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: it's just part of this set of codes that ants follow,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: which if you run into this if if you are
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: on a ball and there's water and you run into
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: the edge of that ball, you form raft Like it's
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: just this kind of binary set of very simple codes
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: that ants seem to follow. And what code or what
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: set of codes is triggered um depends on what pheromone
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: the ant is either laying down for the next ant
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: or is picking up from the last hand. Yeah, I
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: love lamp exactly. Uh. They also can communicate via touch.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: If you've ever uh gone to your kitchen counter like
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: I have, and you've seen ants walking in a trail,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: you've probably seen a little two way street happening where
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: a bunch of ants are going in one direction and
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: a bunch of ants right next to him are going
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: in the other direction. And if you look really really close,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: if you have like a magnifying glass, maybe you might
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: notice the sunshine. Oh no, no, no, don't ever do that.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, just get down there with your eyeballs. Then, um,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: they might be touching each other. That might be there
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: and intenta might be touching. They may be stroking each
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: other's exoskeleton, and they Scientists basically think that these are
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: also um communicative signals to one another again saying hey,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: there's some great twinkie over there. Sometimes someone might even
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: have a little bit of a twinkie he'll give to
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: someone midway through the line and say, hey, hey, buddy,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: this is what's waiting down there. Pass it down, and
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: that game of telephone happens again. Yeah, mouth to mouth
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: food transfer it, which is nice, but I guess it's
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: better than mouth ainus food transfer, like you were talking
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: about earlier. Depends what you're into. I saw another explanation
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: for why aunts do that, because if you look closely,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: pretty much every ant does that to every ant that
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: they come across, going in the opposite direction. And I
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: find one theory right now. One theory is that they're
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: examining the ant to make sure it's one of their
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: nest mates and not an intruder from another joining in
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: the fun, which makes a lot of sense as well.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Every time I see ants doing that, I just go
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: in my head, good game, good game, good game game.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah right, that's one of my favorite parts of Days
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: and Confused is just like the nostalgia. They're like any
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: kid who's ever played Little knows that completely forced an
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: enthusiastic good game line that you gotta walk down good stuff.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: What else do we have here? Oh boy, chok? We
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: should we should um branch off into another standalone podcast
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: called aunt rant. Uh all right, let's talk a little
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: bit more about nesting, and I think that's kind of
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: all we've got. Um if you look and how they
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: build their nest, you know, a lot of researchers have
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: been looking at this. Uh. Speaking of which, this made
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: me want to buy an aunt farm for my daughter
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: for Christmas. But when I looked into him, I read
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: reviews where it seems like about a third of the
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: review said the ants just sat around and waited to
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: die in front of my daughter or my son, and
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: it was traumatic. I don't really agree with keeping anything enclosed,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: I know, I just the whole thing felt wrong, and
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: so I didn't get it. Good for you, Jack, I mean,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: it was a little selfish and that I didn't want
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: a bad experience to happen. But then I thought, you know,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: you're also getting ants shipped through the mail. I know
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: there shipped at a certain temperatures so they stay alive.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: And you know, also saw success stories were like, oh man,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: they did great and they lived their whole lifespan. But
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: it just wasn't worth it at the risk. So anyone
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: should do is order some of his answer the mail
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: and just release them into your or just release them
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: onto my daughter while she's asleep and immobile and see
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: what happens. But researchers obviously have been studying ant nests
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: and colonies for a long long time, and uh, you
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: know all those tunnels that look like little sponges, mentioned
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: the one on YouTube where they actually filled it with concrete,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: which is pretty amazing. But they decided to take this
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: stuff and put it into like a computer model to
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: see what what happened when it came out the other side.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: And one of the things they learned was they have
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: these very basic rules that kind of governed everything they did,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: one of which was each ant would pick up at
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: a very very steady rate two grains of dirt or
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: sand per minute and carry it. Which that seems like
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: a clue right there. If they're following some sort of
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: time scale, especially if it corresponds to our understanding of time,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: that seems significant. You know, Yeah, I mean, I guess
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: they would do that because that's the most efficient rate
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: of work, like the most efficient speed of work I guess,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: like without getting overly tired or not getting enough done,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I think that's another example
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: though that we like we watch ants do things and
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: we don't understand exactly why, we just know it works
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: really well. Yeah, uh, what else did they see? Um?
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: They also saw that, um, there was a preference for
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: dropping that grain that they were tunneling out excavating by
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: another more another recently dropped piece of grain, which I
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: think is an example of that stigma g where they
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: there was like some yeah, they just saw like they're
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: just their behaviors triggered by by somebody else's behavior. Right,
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: And then the last thing they saw they saw these
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: three basic rules, was they would drop them closer to
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: the grains that were already dropped by another ant. And
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: they think that it's like a pheromone marker, Like hey,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: I dropped this grain here, like this is where we're
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: building this thing, right, And so they created this. They
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: they followed these ants movements like they really studied and
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: tracked real ants, and then they created a computer model
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: that simulated ants just following these three rules. And apparently
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: the model created something that looked a heck of a
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: lot like an ant nest that you would see in
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: in nature, so much so that there were connections that
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: were developed between chambers. And these researchers were like, we
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: didn't tell it to create connections that just happened on
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: its own. It's a great example of that emergent behavior
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: um that that comes from the collective actions of a
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: bunch of individuals is doing their own thing. Yeah. I mean,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: and they have these you know, if you look at
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: this concrete when they excavated it was they have these
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: big chambers. They have these tubes and then these big
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: rooms basically, and each of these rooms as a function. Uh,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: they're not just like let's just make a little space here.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: You know. They take care of their dad a lot
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: of times, and uh, you know, I don't think they
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: quite bury them, but they tend to they're dead. Uh,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: it's it's remarkable. Yeah, they have aunt cemeteries that they
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: dump bodies on. It's pretty cool, very cool. So there
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: was one last thing I saw. Um there's a type
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: of ant that basically engages in nursing where if you
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: these ants raid termite mounds and the termites sometimes will
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: take a leg or two, and if you're just missing
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: a leg or two, you will be carried back by
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: basically paramedic ants to the nest and then nursed back
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: to health with an antibiotic that the ants produced themselves. Wow,
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: aunt Rant, chuck, aunt Rant, You got anything else? I
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: got nothing else? We think Joey, Joey from Tucson. Thanks Joey.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: Great idea, great idea for ants. We had no idea
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: it was going to be a two parter in this
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: remarkable remarkable indeed. And if you want to be like
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: Joey and get in touch with us to let us
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: know topic you'd like to suggest, who knows, it might
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: even become an incredible two parter. You can reach out
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: to us via email at stuff podcast at i heart
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
• 42:19
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• 42:22
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