This Is Why Ants Always Lose Wars

[Music] in the animal kingdom no war happens without a reason what can creatures like ants and wasps be fighting over turns out over a lot first of all the aphids you probably don't need me to tell you that some ant species have mastered farming they farm aphids they're like cows to ants aphids mainly feed on plant sap and secrete a sugar-rich liquid quite favored by ants they herd aphids to the juiciest parts of plants protect them from predators and carry them to their nests at night and for the winter in return they get to milk their cows stroking them with their antennae in short it's a win-win for everybody until wasps show up they have their own plans for aphids which i wouldn't call very humane while there's a fair exchange of favors between ants and aphids wasps especially brekana day use live aphids as food for their larva the female wasp lays an egg into the aphid and when the larva hatches it begins to feed on its home until the aphid dies and turns into a mummy you realize why there's a feud right no wonder the ants ate wasps they take their food away from them and even sort of destroy their farms actually the resources are the most logical reason to start the war but sometimes nature itself incites clashes between ants and wasps this branch with the ant colony on it accidentally broke off during the storm and fell right into a wasp nest one random branch ants are much stronger when they team up and several individuals attack one wasp they pull it in different directions trying to tear it apart but in a one-on-one battle the ant stands no chance against the wasp which is why they attacked together for some time the numbers were on the side of the ants until wasps switched to an aerial attack well the ants quickly realized they had no chance against the wasp air force and began to evacuate they had to gather everything left of the colony in order to build everything from scratch in a new place you think all this looks like a well-coordinated action by experienced military forces you're right to a certain degree in these wars there's a division into ranks for example when attacked by ants misokitoris cerberus wasps entrust the protection of the nest to the oldest wasps including the queen although these wasps usually have very different duties things change when it comes to defense not because these wasps have much more experience the thing is older individuals will hardly be able to create a colony in a new place which means they're expendable well this is how nature works if you think about it this is also a kind of strategy that helps in waging war but for coordinations during battle some commanders would come in handy do the wasps have them they have something better social wasps have pheromones as soon as one individual spots the danger or faces the enemy it releases special chemicals into the air for the rest of the colony they work like a trigger the wasps quickly realize what they have to do their attacks are so coordinated they can drive even large predators away from the nest and yes all this without giving any orders only using the pheromones but it's not enough to coordinate your actions if you watched at least one movie featuring a castle siege you know that planning ahead is an important step wasps can't boil oil or fortify gates instead they use special secretions of their bodies to rub them all across the nest ever seen how mosquito sprays work well wasps came up with something similar only against ants the parasitic wasp ick newman humerus went one step further check this out first the caterpillars of the maculine alcon butterflies pretend to be ant larva so that the ants carry them to the anthill and take care of them in every possible way the ants really do this and at that moment a wasp shows up it lays eggs in caterpillars and well it's clear what happens next but in order to get into the ant hills the wasps had to learn how to drive the ants crazy literally wasps secrete six different chemicals that cause ants to bite and sting each other and while the ants are busy fighting each other the wasps can penetrate the anthill or quietly crawl out of it when they finish eating the caterpillars and mature it may seem that wasps can't possibly become stronger smarter and more dangerous opponents for ants and then steve told me that some wasps have some kind of military training paper wasps can observe fighting rivals and draw conclusions based on their strength that's quite convenient to study the enemy in advance using what scientists call social eavesdropping depending on the intel the wasps get they choose an appropriate behavior model that is they choose whether to get into a fight or not now just think about it if creatures as tiny as wasps can observe each other learn and make conclusions they may well study ants the same way and realize oh so these ones have huge jaws and these ones are attacking in a group it's much easier to win a battle if you know your enemy what was that oh there's another trick of the wasps in their endless war against the ants battles don't always have to end in bloodshed because most often scouts go ahead of the ant army they're looking for wasp larva and the wasps of course aren't happy about that so they learn to pick up and then drop these ants yes this is exactly what happens in new zealand the wasps lift their opponents carry them over a certain distance then drop them certainly not for the purpose of maiming wasps like us know that ants are too light to suffer from any kind of fall but they're very easily confused so the scout no longer understands in which direction he was going and why by the way steve once came across one such scout too scouts in fact are considered the intellectual elite of any ant colony they make up one percent of all lands they're smart brave and cautious individuals who never sacrifice themselves the colony needs scouts alive because they're the ones who find food and pave the way to it and then help the workers find their way back but wasps are smarter anyway smart enough to pick up and drop more than just scouts for example wasps act the same way to get rid of common worker ants who compete with them for food scientists have estimated that some ants need to be dropped just a few inches from their target this is enough to confuse them and prevent them from calling for reinforcements you know like that time when you walked into the room and forgot what you needed there but in the case of ants this works only in 47 of the cases the other 53 percent of ants are still finding their way to food and return to fight well in 75 percent of cases the wasps still win perhaps some of you are wondering if wasps have to fight ants anyway why isn't it easier to do it right away why carry them back and forth well this seems to be a safer option especially when the ants are spraying the attackers with an acidic chemical cocktail like the ants in new zealand if a wasp had bitten an and it'd probably have had a mouthful of that stuff the ant isn't nutritious enough to go through this trouble wasps are smart enough to understand this they seem to know everything about ants hell wasps have even learned to grow ant heads for hunting i'm not kidding now scientists have found the only individual of the klistopaiga caramba wasp by accident and even thought that it was deformed well you don't expect a wasp to have an ant's head for the butt but entomologists have looked into this and admitted this was a new species that for some reason pretends to be an ant it's still unclear why though maybe to scare away those who are afraid of ants or maybe to lure those who want to eat them well scientists need to find at least a couple more of these wasps but if you think using an ant for protection when you're a wasp is somehow weird check out the bone house wasp that's a chinese wasp species that became famous for making barricades out of dead ants these wasps plug the entrance to their nests with the bodies of their enemies and this is quite a clever strategy ants are covered with characteristic chemicals that help them recognize each other and which stays on the shelves of even dead ants for a long time these chemicals can confuse parasites looking for wasp nests anyway ants are active predators who'd want to approach them oh what about infiltrating wasps take fire ants one of the most dangerous invasive species on the planet these ants inflict a very painful bite and defend their nests aggressively but while people are trying to fight the invaders the wasps have already found a perfect way to deal with them any predatory insect that attempts to enter a fire ants nest is usually attacked and killed except that ants don't notice how tiny wasp larvae and i mean really tiny smaller than a pinhead attach themselves to them an ant simply has to touch the leaf and soon he'll carry the wasp larva to the anthill there fire ants often come in close contact with each other the larva are carried from one ant to another absorbing the smell of the colony then the wasp larva gets into the ant larva and quietly develops inside eating its host can several wasps grow in one ant hill at once why not these guys are literally destroying ant colonies from the inside while some scientists argue wasps don't do that much harm given the rate at which red fire ants breed but if you add this infiltrating method of warfare to all the other ones and you know what the wasps have studied the ants so well they even began to settle near them what for to steal their food of course ants living on the amazonian hertel fisaphora tree must have thought their life was good they protect the tree from other insects and get shelter and nectar in return but the ants need protein so they turn the tree into a huge trap of hairs they cut from it as soon as an insect gets into it the ants tear it apart but there's a small problem here after catching the prey it can take more than 9 hours for the ants to tear it apart for example if it's some kind of grasshopper and during this time there will be other contenders for the prey wasps they often settle nearby and take advantage of the fact that they're much faster than ants by the time these little guys pull their prey apart the wasp will have time to eat and fly away maybe it'll come back for more although there's always the possibility that the wasp accidentally puts its leg at the wrong place and then the ants can attack the wasp itself seems like this confrontation keeps going for millions of years but the most amazing thing is that the evolutionary tree of ants leads back to the wasps that's a serious scientific study conducted by real scientists and published in the current biology journal so ants and wasps used to be a family but then they split ways and since then they've been waging a cruel war against each other sounds almost like a shakespeare play see you later you

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Id: EB0KoYtBFNE

Length: 12min 0sec (720 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 14 2022