Antzilla | Awesome Animals

[Music] they're tiny but might and when hundreds of thousands joined forces they can think move and act as one massive super organism it breathes like an organism it reproduces like an organism it behaves much more like say a human body this humble little ant is a growing global superpower spreading across the world and under our feet discover how this tiny animal genius isn't so little after all answer one of nature's greatest success stories they're what some call a super organism that's when a group of individuals band together and act like one single being but how can millions of tiny minds get totally in sync the most amazing thing about ant behavior is that it even happens at all each one of these ants has the potential to be an individual to go off and do her own thing yet they don't and figuring out why ants do that rather than going it alone is very key question in ant science to find out we're using the franking camp a remote-controlled macro camera to supersize the ants and enter their secret society up this close ants will reveal behavior that was once almost impossible to see we'll find out how millions of brains can be better than one all ants are social insects living and working together it's what has made them such a success they're everywhere but some species are just much more social than others and when they are they explode by the thousands like these long-legged ants one of the most common ants in the North American desert even entomologist Alex Wilde is impressed by their power in numbers these are long-legged ants there are really common species in the Sonoran Desert and as you can tell by their name they're quite leggy and they're pretty fast and the thing that these guys do is find stuff that's out there in the desert fast and they bring it back before anyone else has a shot at it but just how does a city of 3,000 workers all female at that operate dr. wilds franking camp dives underground to find out it sounds like a Royal Society an industrious highly organized city run by a queen but this queen has only one job to lay eggs she doesn't have to worry about much else each of her 3,000 dedicated workers is assigned a very specific job it makes for a more organized system but it comes at a cost workers have to give up queenly ambition with ants the challenge is getting the workers to abandon their own reproduction in order to help the colony as a whole to help the Queen reproduce but the workers don't always obey the rules each of them can reproduce if they dare [Music] that's from the perspective of the rest of the ants cheating and it undermines the cohesiveness of the colony this worker is getting ready to lay eggs but the change in her body creates a telltale odor her sisters sniff her out they wrestle her to the ground and hold her down for up to three days she's not harmed but her eggs shrink it's what's best for the whole colony when an individual worker decides to selfishly start laying eggs that is a cancer to the super organ an ant colony has an immune system against cheaters worker policing is similar to the body's own anti-cancer defenses the crisis is averted and the workers go back to collecting food but as dawn approaches there's a new problem a better armed and better organized neighbor is after the same food a dispute over resources leads to a clash of civilizations on the desert floor a mesquite seed sparks a battle between an infantry of long-legged ants and the heavily armed red harvester ants they're equipped with stingers and the most powerful venom of any insect in the world reinforcements continue to pour out from the harvester nest and eventually the long-legged ants have no choice but to retreat they're out equipped and outnumbered harvesters are simply bigger and badder on the superorganism scale unlike long-legged ants this colony of red harvester ants is in my opinion a superorganism and I say that because these individual workers do not reproduce the future of the genes that they carry with them has to flow through the Queen they function very much as cells individual cells of a larger organism all of their energy is channeled into the Queen and her newly hatching eggs this is the family's next generation with temporary wings passed down from their wasp cousins they fly to faraway places to create new growing colonies some fly to remote parts of the Arizona desert others start vibrant buzzing colonies right in the middle of town here in Tucson Arizona millions and millions of sprawling ant metropolis lie just beneath our feet we might not notice them because the ants themselves are so small but on a typical city block there might be tens or hundreds or even thousands of ant colonies all going about their own business pretty much ignoring us the way we ignore them four harvester ants business is good without babies to worry about workers have more time to simply work it looks like chaos but it's actually more organized than it might seem first there are nest maintenance workers picking up little pebbles moving them around there are patrollers who are generally milling about and foragers are always on the hunt we don't think that these ants are able to recognize their individual nest mates that is they don't know Frank and Bob and Susie but they're very good at counting and smelling foragers smelled different from nest maintenance workers and those smell different from the guards and so if they measure returning foragers at a particular speed at a particular pace they'll know to either go out if there's a lot of food coming in or if there's not to stay home but a superorganism has more than daily chores to do what about the bigger decisions in life like when and where to move or how to handle a food shortage how do millions of ants ever agree on dinner let alone anything at all communication is key central america's army ants are an organized force in constant motion dr. Sean O'Donnell studies all the ants in this Costa Rican forest but army ants are in a league of their own this is one of the supreme examples of super organism ik development in insect societies that we know of they have some of the biggest enemies of any kind of cells and insects and they move with a you might almost say a ferocity that's hardly ever matched in the animal kingdom these ants never stop moving and getting a clear view of them is next to impossible that's where the remote-controlled Franken cam comes in handy it flies above the ants getting up close and personal detail of both their biology and their behavior Sean can identify exactly which size and shape of ants are doing what job each worker belongs to a different caste or group within the colony much like a human cell belongs to a distinct organ and each caste or organ performs its distinct job big soldiers armed with fierce mandibles keep guard while smaller foragers march into the forest they're like the arms of this super organism reaching out into the forest to grab its food right now we're in the middle of one of the most spectacular sights in the rainforest is a swarm rate of army ants ants have poured out of their bivouac probably starting about 6:30 this morning but what's remarkable is that army ants are nearly blind no one really knows where they're going unless that is they heightened their senses they must pick up tiny bits of information from around them moisture vibration the scent of prey and in turn leave a trail of chemicals behind for others to follow interact with each other almost constantly there's very little time that passes when a single ant doesn't talk to the nest mate as they're sweeping through the forest it's a network almost as intricate as the connections and a human brain there is no doubt there is power in numbers [Music] the group can take down insects much larger than them and they're powerful stings inject digestive chemicals that dissolve tissue and turn it into mush their captor simply falls apart into smaller pieces for easy transport back to the colony army ants have no nest only a massive mobile swarm of bodies for two weeks it is rested here while the Queen lays her eggs but it's now time to undertake an epic move to find fresh hunting grounds shortly before dusk the super organism begins to stir in the army ant colony begins to move on it's like everyone in Manhattan packing up and relocating 50 miles away on foot Scouts select a site for the new camera they start to link lakes and is more and more ants arrive they join the chain before the end a half a million ants creep the skin and skeleton of a giant protecting the Queen and her young inside an army ant colony is one of Earth's greatest super organisms but this for us hides another and society even more complex but far more peaceful the leaf cutter ants if army ants are like a single predator then this is a single giant herbivore like their name suggests they cut and eat leaves sister ants by the millions all born to one queen in all in service to one enormous colony this surprising clearing in the understory the rainforest is the result of the work of leaf cutter ants what we're looking at here is the surface of a huge nest this is soil that's been excavated up from underground and it's been done by millions of workers that are toiling away under my feet right now below-ground lies in ant city as big as a school bus a vast network of arteries links hundreds of separate chambers each room has a specific purpose and each ant has a specific job to do leaf cutters create the most specialized work force of all ants Scouts are the eyes of the superorganism searching for that perfect leaf they leave a scent trail behind them so the foragers can come collect their prize nice crisp and healthy exactly what they're after big forager ants clip the leaves into portable sections in smaller inspectors check the leaves for dangerous bacteria that could ruin their meal the first job done the forgers lift their clippings and pass them down into the belly of their nest but after all this have you lifting they don't eat the leaves they don't care too much for their greens and instead prefer the funky taste of fungus the leaves nourish the fungus the fungus feeds the ants it's a win-win situation maybe we humans could learn a little about farming from these agricultural lands after all they've been doing it for 50 million years but if the colony is viewed as a super organism the fungus is just another part of the digestive system it acts like the acid in our stomachs breaking down the leaves into a form of energy the ants the cells of the organism can use each fungus garden grows to about the size of a head of lettuce and weighs about a pound a single colony can hold over a hundred gardens to these ants it's a massive skyscraper city of edible goodness but where there is food there is waste in some unlucky members of the caste system have the dirty job of clearing it out they are banished to the bowels of the city foragers gardeners sanitation workers all of these individual ants are part of a single metabolism this supremely organized society could only be achieved through total cooperation and they cooperate because they recognize each other as members of the same reproductive organism whether it's a complex Society of leaf cutters or smaller colonies like harvester ants sisters of the same nest cooperate ants from different nests are mortal enemies even if they're the same exact species this competition helps keep ant populations in balance but some ants have managed to overcome this rule merging super organisms into super colonies with the power to conquer the world [Music] this quiet street in Barcelona Spain has been occupied by invaders tiny unassuming and wholly unstoppable Argentine ants as the name suggests they don't belong outside of South America but now they've taken over with a little help from us humans they've become the most widely distributed ants on earth from their homeland they stowed away in cargo ships to Europe North America even Japan in New Zealand our irrigation and development give these invaders an ideal habitat and with no natural predators to keep them in check their populations exploded but it wasn't all luck they could never have spread so quickly without a little smarts as well instead of fighting neighboring colonies form peace treaties and join forces Argentine ants can live miles apart from each other in separate colonies but they don't recognize that they're different they all act like they're the same creating a massive super colony stretching 3,700 miles along the Mediterranean coast and beyond ants from Japan to California to Europe all belong to the same super colony but in North America there's another rival ant super organism on the scene the fire ants they do more than form an army of allies the colonies completely merge into one nest under one queen as one gigantic superorganism fire ants came from South America to the United States once there they spread like a plague invading homes in attacking livestock they have all the advantages of a top super organism sterile workers a system of organized labor and a network of chemical communication but they also get a lot of help from us this habitat in Central Florida is hostile to most organisms except fire ants and they love land that has been disturbed like this building site biologist Walter Schinkel expects that they've already seized this ground when we turn the forests of this area into parking lots and lawns and all kinds of open areas we make the perfect habitat for fire ants and this side here where we are will attract colony founding fire ant Queens by the thousands the infestation starts just like any other ant colony a fertile fire ant queen mates digs a burrow and lays her eggs but this is where the similarity ends what happens next is the secret to the fire ants super colony three weeks after mating the young queen has the makings of a colony and if she moves fast she could build an empire the first generation is a sisterhood of tiny workers called minions they immediately have to care for the next round of young but the queen is also desperate for food lucky for her fire ants know how to get it fast just about anything will do when a forager finds a morsel she runs back to the nest leaving a trail of pheromones when she arrives the mix of pheromones and food odor gets everyone excited and they're off dozens of her sisters raced down the trail to grab the meal before anything else can but food is not all there after they found a rival nest and they walk right in fire ants don't have many manners they're really only here for one selfish reason this is a mass kidnapping the Raiders take the young back to the stronger nest when the weaker colony realizes it's defeated the workers surrender and help the winning side even the vanquished Queen follows the scent trails of her children and joins our conquerors if the weaker nest were allowed to grow it would eventually compete a losing situation for all instead the surviving nest just got a lot bigger in the nest of their captors the kidnapped eggs hatch mature into adults and are welcomed as one big happy family [Music] it's a very confusing and dynamic process that can last for anywhere from days to weeks I saw one ray that lasted for a whole month and included ultimately 18s that I saw after many raids the nest is full of workers and many queens all laying eggs the colony grows at a rapid pace but this doesn't end happily ever after it's just the calm before the storm the Queens begin to fight for top ranks and for the good of the colony the workers revolt they decide which queen will reproduce for them sometimes even turning against their own mothers rejected Queens meet an ugly end over time ants from dozens of colonies combine under one queen into the ultimate fire ant superorganism using this strategy fire ants can seize new territory and spread faster than we can stop them if we have a problem with ants it's a problem we created their societies are hardwired for efficiency in expansion destined to dominate everywhere they live from City Street to rainforest to desert and it's lucky for us they do a study done in eastern North America showed that insects drop on the forest floor disappeared within three minutes and 100% of them were taken by ants almost everything out there gets recycled through the ads at some point they really are hugely important ants are our ultimate trash compactor we tend to ignore them because they're everywhere but they're everywhere because they're so successful at doing what they do getting millions of minds to think work and live as one their genius [Music]

Channel: National Geographic Kids

Views: 349,766

Rating: 4.4000001 out of 5

Keywords: national geographic kids, nat geo kids, kids, kid, for kids, national geographic, nat geo, animals, making stuff, educational, awesome, bugs, insects, ants, insects morph, acts more like a single creature, single creature, PLQlnTldJs0ZR56MScVzlbeucr3brcHb-e, PLQlnTldJs0ZRrorvuAXfKPCcmI3L2_7nT, group of ants, Antzilla

Id: 9SPixBok5ls

Length: 25min 35sec (1535 seconds)

Published: Thu May 11 2017