Ants

Alex Re

Hello, welcome to on wildlife. I'm your host, Alex Re, on this podcast, we bring the wild to you, we take you on a journey into the life of a different animal every week. And I guarantee you, you're gonna come out of here knowing more about your favorite animal than you did before. I can't wait to get into the episode this week. So you might want to grab a magnifying glass because we're headed into the tiny world of ants.

So the first thing you should know is that there's no shortage of ants in the world. There are over 12,000 species of ants. And in North America alone, there's about 1000 different species. And if you didn't already know, ants outnumbers humans by a lot. There are around one quadrillion individual ants in the world. That means for every one person, there are over 1 million ants. And for those of you who don't like insects, I'm sorry to tell you, but no matter where you go, there's probably going to be ants there as well. They're found almost everywhere in the world, although their highest distribution is near warmer areas, such as South America, Australia, and the southwestern United States. So basically, you can run but you can't hide. There's also evidence to suggest that they've been on earth for over 100 million years. A lot of people are under the assumption that all insects live for about a day and then they die. Well, ants are known as some of the longest living insects depending on the species. Some species like the pharaoh ant lived for less than a year, but other species like the Black Garden and can live for 15 years. And ants like to live in groups called colonies, and they rely on each other to survive. And they have a really intricate hierarchy. There's one female aunt called the queen, and the only thing that she does is mate with the other males to produce offspring. The male ants only job is to reproduce with the queen, and then they usually just die. All other females besides the queen, or the worker ants, these are the ones that you see, and they can't reproduce. They're the ones doing all the heavy lifting. Ants are what's known as a haploid diploid species. And this is really strange. While females have two sets of chromosomes, one from their mom and one from their dad. Males only have one set of chromosomes passed down from their mom who's the queen. This makes it so that only females hatch from fertilized eggs. And males only hatch from eggs that have not been fertilized by another male. There's even one type of ant that has no males in its entire population. The Queen reproduces asexually, and that means that there's only females. There are a lot of different types of ants, and not all species eat the same thing. Some ants are carnivores like army ants, and that means they only eat meat. And you do not want to get into the way of these guys. When one of their scouts finds an insect that they can eat. It sends a chemical signal back to their colony, which makes others from the colony attack. Army ants have huge mandibles, which are basically like scissors attached to their mouse, and they are meant to cut up their prey. They can overpower insects that are much larger than them because they have so many different individuals all attacking at once. And when they've overpowered their prey, they release a chemical that digests the animal and turns it into a liquid that they can then eat like something out of a horror movie. Other ants are herbivores like the leaf cutter and you may have seen a picture or videos of ants walking in a line back to their colony carrying a lot of leaves. These are most likely leaf cutter ants. And they're mostly found in Central and South America. They're called leaf cutter ants because they do exactly that. They cut the leaves off of trees to bring back to their colony. But contrary to popular belief, they don't eat these leaves. they chew up the leaves, and then they use the chewed up leaves as fertilizer to grow fungus that they have in their nest. So instead of eating the leaves, they're actually eating the fungus that they grow, which basically makes them farmers. And they've been doing this for millions of years. It's a symbiotic relationship that the ants have with this fungus. And what's really interesting is that this fungus doesn't grow anywhere else in the wild. The only way that they can live is with the help of the ants. In order to keep the fungus alive. The ants like to keep their area where they're growing the fungus clean, and they excrete antibacterial chemicals to make sure that no bacteria In fact, the fungus so you could say that ants were farming before it was cool. Okay, so we're going to take our first short break, and when we get back, I'm going to start talking about ant nests and why they probably don't need air conditioning units.

Time for our trivia question of the day. Why do flamingos stand on one leg? A to keep one of their legs from being bitten by fish? B, they need to practice their balancing skills. See, they use it to catch shrimp, or D in order to keep their legs from getting cold. The answer is D. flamingos stand on one leg while the other one is retracted in order to keep their legs from getting too cold and releasing too much heat. Okay, so we're back and we're gonna start talking about ants building their nests. So usually ants build their nests underground. They may look simple on the outside, but underneath there an intricate tunnel of networks for the answer travelled through. Some ant nests are larger than others on the outside. For example, what ants can build nests that are over two meters tall. And some research actually shows that these ants can control the temperature that's inside the nest by building different vents. And this is really important because ants are ectotherms. That means that their outside environment determines their body temperature. So if their nest is too hot or too cold, the ants won't be able to survive. But not all ants build their nests underground. For example, Weaver ants actually make their nests in trees. They use the silk that they produce with their own mouths in order to stitch together leaves that are still attached to the trees, and their nest ends up being entirely made out of these leaves. Army ants on the other hand, move around a lot, so they don't have permanent nests. instead. 1000s of individual ants linked together to form a temporary nest called a bivouac. And remember how I was talking about how wood ants can control the temperature of their nest. Well, army ants can do the same with their bivouac. In order to build these structures, ants have to be social and constantly communicating with each other. There's a lot of research that shows that ants exhibit altruistic behavior. This means that they care more about the survival of others in the colony than they do about themselves. This could be due to the fact that all of the ants in the colony are extremely closely related because they all come from one queen. So even if an ant dies, another ant will likely pass down almost the same genetic information to the next generation that the other ant would have passed down. Examples of altruism and ants can be seen in a few different cases. Army ants have been known to build bridges, not out of sticks or leaves, but out of each other. All the ants cling on to each other in order to form a bridge that others can cross over. And just when you thought it couldn't get any cooler. fire ants can actually cling together to form a raft so that they can float on water when it floods. They can stay like this for weeks at a time. Because ants are insects, their bodies are segmented into three separate parts, the head, the thorax, and the abdomen. on their head, ants have two eyes that are made up of a bunch of smaller components called ommatidia. And they can't see very well. Their vision is mostly dependent on changes in light rather than seeing objects. And this is why they have receptors all over their body that can pick up chemical signals left by other ants. Ants also use their antenna to fill out areas around them. And they have chemical receptors in order to pick up pheromones. Ants don't really use sound or sight to communicate with each other. They can either send chemical signals, or they can communicate by touching they're intended together

and also have six legs and their legs are pretty long compared to their body size. And because of this, a lot of species of ants can run really fast. For example, this a Heron silver ant can run as fast as 33 inches per second. That means if ants were as tall as people, they would be able to run at around 500 miles per hour. That's enough to fuel your nightmares. six foot tall ants chasing you down an alleyway aren't really anything you have to worry about. But there's a much more real danger lurking in the rain forests of Central and South America. The bullet ant bullet ants are named because of the stinger located at the end of their abdomen. Apparently getting stung by one of these ants makes it feel as though you've been shot with an actual bullet. And the pain can last for an entire day. And when the bullet ant stings you, it releases a chemical that makes other ants from the colony attack. Luckily, they don't go out of their way looking for people to sting. An ant anatomy also makes it so that they can lift incredible weights for their size, ants can lift over 50 times their own body weight, the strongest man in the world can only lift around 1000 pounds, which is only about three times his own body weight. Imagine how strong ants would be if they learned how to benchpress. So we're gonna take our last little break. And when we get back, I'm going to start talking about why ants are so important to the ecosystem.

If you want more information about ants, or you just want to suggest a new animal for me to talk about, you can email on wildlife. dot podcast@gmail.com You can also visit our website@www.on wildlife.org. Okay, so we're back. And you might be thinking at this point, answer cool, but what do they do for the world around us? Well, ants play a pivotal role in any ecosystem that they live in. First of all, when ants build their nests underground, they actually help the soil by air raiding it, which in turn helps plants grow. They also help disperse and plant seeds by taking the seeds underground into their nests. ants can also help keep their habitat clean by eating dead and decaying organisms. Ants play a huge role in the food web as well. Aside from the fact that they eat dead and decaying organisms, a lot of animals also eat them. Just to name a few animals that eat ants, frogs, lizards, spiders, birds, small mammals, the list goes on. And a species of birds called ant birds actually follow army ants around and they eat insects that try to fly away from the army ants. Ants also prey on pests such as termites and ticks that could be detrimental to homes, farms and human health. Not only that, but they could also be pollinators. ants have been known to crawl across flowers and transfer pollen from one flower to another. So the next time you see an ant, instead of stepping on it, you might want to thank it for all of its hard work, unless it's a bullet, and in which case, you might want to run the other direction. Luckily, most species of ants aren't in danger of becoming extinct. But some of them are, for example, the black backed meadow and is endangered. They mostly live in Europe, but they're greatly decreasing because of urban development. Another species called the dawn and is also endangered. They mostly live in Australia. And they're endangered because of habitat loss. They mostly live in trees. And because of the constant wildfires in Australia, their populations declining. They're also at risk because of climate change. These ants are nocturnal, meaning that they're active at night. And they thrive at night because it's cooler than it is during the day. But because of climate change, it's starting to get warmer and warmer at night, which is causing a decrease in their population. Another large threat to ants is the overuse of pesticides. This is just one of the reasons that pesticides are really bad for the environment. There's some great organizations that help ants and other insects that you should really check out. Bug life beyond pesticides and entomological Society of America are all organizations that you should really take a look at. Thank you so much for coming on this adventure with me as we explored the tiny world of ants. You can find the sources that we used for this podcast and links to organizations that we reference@www.on wildlife.org Don't forget to join us for another adventure next Wednesday on wherever you listen to podcasts. And that's on wildlife.

Jess Avellino

You've been listening to on wildlife

with Alex

brought to you every Wednesday.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai