National Geographic Wild City Of Ants

a million insects or a single creature when ants unite the individual vanishes and the group becomes a beam unto itself scientists call it a superorganism it breathes like an organism it reproduces like an organism it behaves much more like say a human body its turn Summits into global superpowers now new technology is exploring how millions of tiny minds get so in sync in state-of-the-art cameras probe deeper than ever into their secret society and under my feet right now is a colony of millions of workers collaborating toiling together revealing how ants turn the many into one giant beast in the Central American rainforest a marauding horde of army ants is on the move when they show up everything else gets out of the way or gets eaten for they are a fierce and powerful force that moves and hunts like a single voracious predator when social behavior is taken to the extreme it becomes something greater a super organism it's a concept many scientists use when a group of individuals is so hyper connected that it behaves like one autonomous being the concept of the super organism is that of thinking of the colony as a bunch of separate organisms think of it as a single big organism where the individual worker ants are kind of like the cells in our body and in some cases they're specialized the way our tissues and organs are specialized for particular jobs working together has made ants one of nature's greatest success stories but how do they achieve the supreme organization how does so many tiny Minds fuse into one 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 they persist in living in these societies and figuring out why ants do that rather than going it alone is a very key question in ant science scientists now have a new tool at their fingertips a remote-controlled macro camera known as Franken cam meets the ants on their level when ants gets super-sized they reveal behavior that was once almost impossible to see at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC dr. Ted Schultz curates one of the most extensive and collections on earth there's probably about 12,000 described species of ants and we know nothing about the biology of the vast majority of these species biologists don't agree which ants if any qualify as a super organism but they agree that all ants have one essential quality their social ants got the communal urge about a hundred and thirty million years ago evolving from a familiar non social insect answer justice stinging wasps like yellowjackets and hornets and other losses the special thing that ants have evolved that makes them different from the other wasps they become social and what we've got here is a non social stinging wasp and then we've got a social ant the bullet ant bullet ants still look a lot like their wasp relatives like almost all ants in a colony this worker is female and she's got the basic shape and equipment that all ants have a body in three segments encased in an exoskeleton large and powerful mandibles for defense and heavy lifting scent glands that release pheromones the secret to ant communication and antennae lined with nerve cells tuned into both smell and touch the perfect toolkit for a very communal insect but bullet ants don't take social life that far their colonies are small and each worker is a self-sufficient hunter at about two and a half centimeters long she can take down prey on her own bullet ants succeed in part on the strength of the individual but a true superorganism needs a much larger population to achieve that workers have to be a lot less individualistic these long-legged ants are tackling that challenge to establish a much larger society and become one of the most common ants in the North American desert dr. Alex Wilde specializes in cataloguing ant species 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 an endoscopic camera reveals a complex colony it's more like an underground village of about 3,000 workers complete with roads and chip in the heart of the colony resides the queen she looks like her minions but is noticeably larger it's the first sign of a caste system where different looking ants perform different jobs it makes for a more organized system but it comes at a cost workers have to give up Queen Lee ambition with ants the challenge is getting the workers to abandon their own reproduction in order to help the colony as a whole and help the queen reproduce but the workers don't always obey the rules each of them can reproduce if they dare 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 such rebellion must be quelled her sister ants hold her down but they don't harm her one ant checks her body to gauge her fertility after as many as three days her ovaries shrink in her captors release her the crisis is averted and the workers returned to the job of collecting food long legged ants usually forage at night 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 two rivals on one side an infantry division of long-legged ants on the other the heavy armored red harvester ants they're equipped with stingers and the most powerful venom of any insect as morning wears on reinforcements pour from the harvester nest they forced the long-legged ants into a full retreat the secret to the harvester ant victory isn't their weaponry they have the edge in numbers and organization the advantage of being just a bit higher on the superorganism scale they achieve that by making a major sacrifice harvester ant workers are all sterile unlike long-legged ants this colony of red harvester ants is in my opinion a super organism 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 because they cannot contribute to the next generation this lack of ability to reproduce directly ties them in so that they function very much as cells individual cells of a larger organism instead of their own self-interest they now devote themselves solely to maintaining the colony raising their sister workers and a special brood that hatches just once a year this is the true next generation female Queens and drones the only males ever born the colony reproduces as a whole like a tree casting pollen to the wind wings a temporary gift from their wasp ancestors take them far from the birth nest some fly to remote parts of the Arizona desert but others start vibrant colonies right in the middle of town for harvester ants business is good without reproduction to worry about the workers can devote more time to work and these ants divide up the jobs 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 there are the foragers they don't get orders from the Queen the workers organize the labor force themselves 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 the ants at the entrance are able to measure the rate at which ants are returning to the nest and not only that they're able to smell what job that ant is performing foragers smell different from nest maintenance workers those smell different from the guards and so if they measure returning foragers at a particular speed at a particular place they'll know to either go out if there's a lot of food coming in or if there's not to stay home so it's up to the individual to decide what job to do but a superorganism doesn't just decide simple tasks it needs to tackle major issues together as a group like where to move or how to manage food production the question continues to baffle and intrigue scientists how does a group of ants agree on anything ants may appear to be playing follow the leader but in truth no single ant is calling the shots really from a day-to-day point of view it's the workers that were in charge and things are all nice from the bottom up so look that's a workers that know what needs to be done what's less clear is how they agree on what to do dr. Nigel Frank's wants to know how ants make decisions he's enlisted some tiny lab partners that he calls rock ants each one of Nigel's ants has a chip on her shoulder well the chicks are fantastic I mean they're they're absolutely tiny so we can glue them on the back of an endless two millimeters long and what the chips enable us to do is to get each individual ant to identify itself to us by identifying individuals Nigel can tell who collects information how they communicate it and how a consensus is reached at the moment they're living happily in their nest of cardboard and glass the test when that nest is destroyed how do they decide where to move so here is the old nests which I've destroyed by taking off the top microscope slide and they're pretty annoyed about that and pretty angry with me and so they've got nowhere to live currently and they're going to have to find a new nest site to live in and we've offered them at the other end of the arena a poor-quality site over here and a really beautiful high-quality nest site over there the ants begin inspecting their two options every time an individual enters or exits the potential nest a laser beam records its passing this ant has discovered the good quality nest site so she returns to the old nest and reports her findings there's a brush of antenna her body emits a pheromone a chemical signal her sister ant receives the message come and see they do a very special format of recruitment called tandem running and that's where one end literally leads just a single other nests mate what we've been able to show is that tan and running qualifies as teaching and what pleases me is that it was the first case that would Walter demonstrate teaching in any other animal in ourselves and so the ants are incredibly special as for the ants that found the less desirable nest their reports are less enthusiastic they solicit fewer tandem runners dr. Frank suspects that each ant has a basic concept of what makes a good home so more ants get recruited to the good nest enough to convince the colony as a whole within an hour or so the entire colony has moved and let me put this in very anthropocentric temps that they'll think well it isn't just me think there's a nice side is good all of my friends think it's good too so by using not just their own individual opinions if you will but the opinions of lots of their nest mates they can form very accurate decisions this one-on-one recruitment is fine for a small nest but other ants have developed more sophisticated communication networks to help them build gigantic societies 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 superorganism ik development in insect societies that we know of they have some of the biggest colonies of any kind of social insects and everything they do is done with an incredible degree of coordination and communication and they move with an intensity you might almost say a ferocity that's hardly ever matched in the animal kingdom with ants flowing like water getting a clear view is a challenge the remote-controlled Franken cam is able to follow individuals as they move what this does is allow the camera to move through a wide range of motions and float along above the ants almost as if you're flying right above them and this gives the skilled cameraman the ability to capture ant behavior in unparalleled detailed ways up close it becomes clear that specialized ants are doing specialized things workers are different body sizes and different shapes in an army ant colony differ behaviorally they perform different jobs for the colleague these workers belong to distinct castes like human cells belong to distinct organs big soldiers armed with fierce mandibles keep guard while smaller foragers sweep into the forest these are the limbs of the super organism and they're reaching out for a warm meal they're interacting with each other almost constantly can they do this by following chemical trails lay down by their nest mates and also by maintaining close contact with each other there's very little time that passes when a single ant doesn't touch a nest mate as they're sweeping through the forest a network nearly as intricate as synapses in a human brain guiding the mass to what it seeks the group overwhelms much larger insects powerful stings inject digestive enzymes that liquefy tissue the prey simply falls apart into manageable pieces for transport back to the colony army ants have no nest only a mobile mass of bodies for two weeks it is rested here while the Queen lays her eggs but now it must move on hunting grounds a move that will take an epic feat of organization shortly before dusk the superorganism begins to stir the huge army ant colony is moving on the Queen only emerges after most have made the journey and left a clear trail for her to follow nursery workers convey the delicate cargo of young in a single night the colony travels about 90 meters or more it's like a city full of people suddenly packing up and relocating 80 kilometers away on foot scouts have already selected a site for the new camp they begin to link legs as ants arrived they join the chain Oh the fluid body of the super organism grows solid forming a shell around the queen and young half a million cells morph into the skin and skeleton of a single sleeping giant the army ant colony is one of Earth's great super organisms but this forest harbors another ant society even more complex and far more peaceful it is a column of leaf cutter ants Oh if army ants are like a single predator then this is a single giant herbivore sister ants by the millions all born to one queen and all in service of 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 an 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 assemble the most specialized workforce of all ants Scouts are the eyes of the super organism they search for desirable foliage and leave a scent trail that marks the way for the mouth who the mouth of the superorganism is the many tens of thousands of foragers that are out in the field cutting up leaves and bringing them back to the nest unlike a single organism though we have one mouth what you have in a leaf cutting ant colony are tens of thousands of mouths out there and they can cover a lot of territory big forager ants clip the leaves into portable sections as they slice small quality controllers inspect the leaves for harmful bacteria the first job done the foragers hoist up their clippings and convey them below-ground into the belly of the beast the leaves aren't for the ants they're food for this a subterranean garden a fungus that grows nowhere else the leaves nourish the fungus the fungus feeds the ants in one sense these answer farmers who perfected agriculture about 50 million years before humans did but if the colony is viewed as a super organism the fungus is just part of the digestive system it converts the leaves into a form that the cells the ants can use and every day they're going out and they're taking as much fresh vegetation as an adult cow would take it is the fungus that's digesting what would otherwise be in digestibility and food for the ants each fungus garden grows to about the size of a head of lettuce and weighs about half a kilogram a single colony can hold over a hundred where there's a digestive system there's solid waste to deal with tainted by the service they perform they are condemned to toil in the bowels of the city foragers gardeners sanitation workers all 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 exact same species this competition helps keep ant populations in balance but some ants have managed to overcome this rule forming peace trees merging super organisms into super colonies with the power literally to conquer the globe 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 to become the most widely distributed ants on earth they did it with help from us from their native homeland they stowed away in cargo ships to Europe North America even Japan New Zealand but they couldn't have done it so well and so fast without another trick instead of fighting neighboring colonies joined forces biologist Xavier Espada lay is trying to figure out why this peace treaty works he patrols the cities of Spain picking up ants from colonies kilometers apart then he takes them back to his lab to perform what he calls an aggression test no I miss you they fight for root when they meet they identify one another by smell these two are from colonies many kilometers apart they should smell different to each other and that difference should tell them they're enemies but for some reason it doesn't in those arms of couple of hands coming from different populations I'm not fighting they meet each other they touch antennae they do fight some scientists believe the lack of aggression comes from a genetic shift that happened after they left Argentina the change may have caused their identifying sense to become muted they are sending the clear message to me that they belong in same super colony the result is millions of Argentine ant colonies that all act like they're the same a super colony it stretches 6,000 kilometers along the Mediterranean coast and it doesn't end there trillions of ants in that main super colony that it's distributed all over the world ants from Japan to California to Europe all belong to the same super colony but an enemy has appeared an upstart Argentine super colony Xavier is smack in the middle of no ants land between two warring super colonies they could be just over the road members of the other super colony now it's question to look for a trail we tried to find you if they are nasty fear to do an aggression test no one is sure where this new super colony came from scientists believe the ants that started it came from a different part of South America than the original invaders back at his lab he repeats the aggression test these two ants are from nest just across the road from each other but they smell just a bit different and that flips the switch from friend - foe in these battles there are no winners in North America another ant invader might have a better strategy for long-term success fire ants they do more than form an army of allies they can completely merge into one nest under one queen as one gigantic super organism fire ants were introduced from South America to the United States once there they spread like a plague invading homes and 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 they also get a lot of help from us here in Central Florida is a habitat that's hostile to most creatures but fire ants excel at colonizing disturbed land 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 this fire ant queen has just made it with a male drone now she digs a burrow in the soil lays eggs and begins to raise a family of workers but this is where the similarity ends what happens next is the secret to the fire ant super colony three weeks after mating the young queen has the makings of a collie and if she moves fast she could build an empire the first generation is a sisterhood of tiny workers called minam's 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 hits the nest like a starting gun dozens of her sisters pour out and race down the trail to grab it before anything else can but food is not all there after they've also found the nest of another fire ant queen and they walk right in this isn't war it's a mass kidnapping biologists call it brew braiding the Raiders take the young back to the stronger nest when the weaker colony realizes its defeated the workers defect and help the winning side even the vanquished Queen follows the scent trails of her children and joins her 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 family it's a very confusing and dynamic process that can last for anywhere from days to two weeks I saw one ray that lasted for a whole month and included ultimately 80 nests that I saw after many raids the nest is full of workers and many queens all laying eggs the colony grows exponentially but this is no commune it's just the calm before the storm as soon as the workers are produced in the nest is open then the Queens begin to compete a nest full of fighting Queens is bad for growth for the good of the colony the workers revolt they decide which queen will reproduce for them sometimes even turning against their own mother's rejected Queens meet an end befitting a deposed monarch until only one is left over time ants from dozens of colonies aggregate under one queen into the ultimate fire ant super organism using this strategy fire ants can seize new territory and spread faster than we can stop them we have a problem with amps it's a problem we created their societies are hardwired for efficiency and expansion destined to dominate everywhere they live from City Street - rainforest to desert its lucky for us they do 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 hands almost everything out there gets recycled through the ads at some point they really are hugely important the earth we inherited was an earth already groomed by ants we tend to ignore them because they are everywhere but they're everywhere because they're so successful at doing what they do getting millions of minds to think and work have lived as one you

Channel: Bernardo Segura

Views: 2,109,314

Rating: 4.7085633 out of 5

Keywords: National Geographic Wild City Of Ants

Id: 55tXhnlZoOg

Length: 44min 56sec (2696 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 27 2013