How I Made an Ant Think It Was Dead—The Zombie Ant Experiment

Okay today I'm going to be trying to trick a harvester ant into thinking it's dead I call this the Night of the Living Dead experiment. Okay, so if you've ever watched a colony of ants you may have noticed that when an ant dies if it's not crushed by anything if It just dies of natural causes and it's bodies just left there the other ants don't really care about it They kind of just walk around it and don't really do anything with the body that is until about two days afterwards Then the ants pick up the dead ant and they take it to a place in their colony. That's called the graveyard So the graveyard is a place in every colony where all of the live ants take the dead ants so in 1950 a young assistant professor named Ed Wilson at Harvard noticed this fact He noticed that the ants don't really care about a dead ant until around two days. Later And so he started to wonder about that He said why don't they take it to the Graveyard right away if it's dead? Why do they wait till two days? Afterward and that made him begin to think that maybe it's because the ant begins to decay and it lifts off some Chemical that lets the other ants know that it's dead So ed went on to revolutionize the study of ants he found that ants communicate Through mostly smell and in his research he set out to discover. What smell it is What chemical is it? The ants actually lit out when they died So with trial and error working with different dead animals trying to extract different chemicals from rotting bodies He discovered the one specific chemical that triggers ants to know that they're dead and that chemical is called Oleic acid and so how he tested this is he grabbed a little dab of oleic acid He put it on the back of a ant that was passing by in one of his colonies and he noticed that almost immediately some of the other ants grabbed that ant and took it over to the ant Graveyard in the ant that had the oleic acid on it was pretty willing. It just accepted its fate it thought I'm dad Take me to the graveyard and it stayed in the graveyard until eventually it cleaned itself off and joined the colony again So in order to test that today I have myself some oleic acid and a nice colony of harvester ants so I got these ants a few days ago I was actually really excited because for some reason my whole life, I've always wanted a nap, but I never got one So I finally got a nap farm is pretty cool I got a kind that's filled with gel so you can actually see the tunnels and As soon as you put them in they just go right to work and they start digging And what's really cool just like in that story I told as soon as some of the ants started dying naturally the other ants started making a graveyard for the ants So as of today, there's about ten apps that have died. You can see their body in the refuse pile here So the question is what happens when I put a lahic acid on one of them. Is it gonna think it's dead itself? well The other ants think it's dead What will happen and I should mention this chemical that I'm putting on it does not hurt the ants at all It has acid in the name, but it's actually just a vegetable oil or an animal fat So it definitely won't hurt the ant okay first, let's try to capture one of the harvester ants Okay That was easy, it's so easy because they get so mad when something enters their cage they just start biting it So you just biting the straw right now? Okay, so now let's put some oleic acid on him and see if we can trick everyone into thinking that he's dead Okay. So in order to be able to work with him a little bit better, I'm gonna put it in the freezer So this doesn't hurt them at all In fact when you get the ants from the store They come in a tube and they suggest you put the tube in the fridge for a little bit in order to transfer them to their new environment So it definitely doesn't hurt the ants but it slows its metabolism down So can I so then I can apply the oleic acid? Okay. There you go. Mr Ant enjoy your time amongst the ice cream and fresh frozen raspberries Okay, we got her out in there. He's not dead. He's just cold. Okay. Now let's put some oleic acid on him I'm just gonna do a little dab Okay, let's put him back in oh he's starting to wake up let's put him back in and see if they think he's dead So I was gonna try to mark the one that I was going to put the oleic acid on But what's easier than that is I'm just gonna track it digitally So I'll mark it with kind of a dot or an arrow as we go and that's the one that has the oleic acid on it Okay, he's in the back there right there, let's see how they treat him Looks like he may be volunteering to go into the graveyard. He thinks he's dead It's interesting it looks like he thinks that he needs to be over in the graveyard area His chemical senses are telling him to bring the dead thing over to the graveyard, but it's on him There he is. Again. He really just wants to hang out in this graveyard area You can see the bulk of the other ones Stay over in this area. They usually they Usually congregate around here But they don't really hang out in this area unless they're bringing a dead ant over But he's just hanging out on the pile as if he were dead So that's really interesting in the study. It was the other ants who brought it over But in this case, it looks like he's hanging out in the area of the dead ants Maybe the impulse is just to go to that area because it senses the oleic acid Those are three other dead ants right there and this is the one who thinks it's dead So you can see that he'll eventually clean himself off get all the oleic acid off and then just return back to his normal Society Okay, so after a while they've all resumed their normal activities It's been about an hour since I put the oleic acid on and they all seem fine They're just crawling around still building their tunnels now and don't forget. I'm taking pre-orders for my very first subscription box so if you like the videos and you like the Experiments that you see me do on my channel and you really want to try them Join the action lab subscription box and every quarter, I'll send you a box filled with awesome Experiments. This is a really cool really well put together box I teamed up with the makers of the Curiosity box from Vsauce is Channel and they do an awesome job at creating subscription boxes So head over to the action lab calm to preorder your first subscription box The first one is going to be in pretty limited quantity So get it while you can and if you're not subscribed to my channel yet hit the subscribe button and hit the bell to be notified when my latest videos out and Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: The Action Lab

Views: 16,901,833

Rating: 4.6850505 out of 5

Keywords: zombie ants, worst sting, ant nest, ant habitat, coyote peterson, queen ant, ant colony, the action lab, fly in vacuum chamber, bullet ant, fire ants, painful sting, fire, ant, colony, nest, hill, solenopsis, cast, molten, aluminum, anthill, anthillart, anthill art, ant hill art, casting, science (tv network), outrageous acts of science, will it bite, vacuum chamber, blackest black, colerless strawberry, harverster ant, hydraulic press, self-pouring, DIY, science for kids

Id: ZPw9dSV6y2c

Length: 7min 43sec (463 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 15 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/mora0004]

Almost all ants are female. The male ants have wings and only live for a short time. Their only purpose is mating with a queen ant. This is the same for male bees and male termites.

[u/CardsLafter]

Aww jeez... Must be dead :/ I gotta say, that's a real kick in the thorax. Welp, off to the graveyard.

[u/Blutarg]

"I'm not dead yet!"

[u/kalabash]

TIL ants have a graveyard

[u/b14700]

He gave him deppression

[u/Xendarq]

I wonder why it isn't used as an insecticide...

[u/theHerbieZ]

Umm I ate some crisps today that said they were high in oleic acid. Have i just eaten dead ant oil? Eh?

[u/dyin2meetcha]

"I'm telling you guys, I was dead! I saw all of you around me and I could tell you knew i was dead. Then I was magically transported to the graveyard, and later, brought back to life! I'm proof there is life after death!"

[u/Ragnarok314159]

TIL I smell like Oleic Acid.