January 4, 2022 • 44 mins
Ants are pretty much amazing. So we're gonna spend two episodes talking all about them. Please enjoy!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, chuck here real quick with some bad news
and sad news. Uh. Sketch Fest this year in San Francisco,
which is where we were gonna have our first live
show in two years here in a couple of weeks,
has been postponed. I believe they're looking to postponed it
by a whole year and kind of rebooked the whole
festival ideally, but you know, with what's going on around
(00:22):
the country with Omicron, they didn't feel like they could
press forward, and UH, as bummed as we are, we
think it's the right move as well. So, uh, if
you have tickets, just stay tuned for an announcement. I
think you will either probably be able to well I'm
not exactly sure what's going to happen with them, maybe
a refund maybe if you hold onto them, they're good
(00:42):
for next year because we're probably gonna look in the
same theater. But listen up for announcement soon. And again,
all apologies, we're super sad about it. We're really looking
forward to getting back out there again. But until further notice,
live shows are still on hold. All right, now here
we go with the show. Welcome to stuff you should
(01:04):
know A production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W.
Chuck Brian over there, and this is stuff you should know,
um one that I'm super super excited about and didn't
realize that I would be this excited about Chuck because
(01:27):
this is a Chuck pick and hats off to you, sir.
I'm surprised that, uh had you just never really thought
about ants much? Yeah, I mean I've looked at them before,
but I've never really researched him. I guess I've I've
seen documentaries and then that of course, the animated cartoon
Ants years ago kind of got me into it. And
(01:48):
I feel like every time I've watched a Nature documentary
about ants, I'm just like continually amazed. Yeah, I mean
they are like amazing. I knew they were amazing, I
just had no idea how amazing they were. Like so
much so we could conceivably do a spinoff podcast on
just ants, if you ask me, I'm willing to do that.
I'm just putting it out there right now. Hey, you
(02:11):
have fun and knock yourself out. No, no, it has
to bebably the first one to subscribe it has to
be both of us, I'm afraid. Uh, we do need
to thank the original inspiration for this though, Joey from Tucson.
Oh you remember that? Oh yeah, what was that a
listener mail that came in? No, this was during our
(02:32):
co Ed Oh yes, yes, yes, our friends at co
ed auctioned off a zoom with Josh and I and
some people were kind enough to donate some money and
we had a zoom and we hung out with everyone
and and and shot the s and Joey and his
mom were on there from Tucson, and Joey said, why
(02:52):
don't you do one on ants? And I said, all right, Joey,
we'll do one on ants. Yeah, and that's gonna be
a good one because joe is gonna get his money's
worth on this. But we're doing Joey, not just one
part on ants. We're doing a two parter on ants.
That's how cool they are. It's a doublet because you
know ants, like you said, we could do a four parter. Yeah.
(03:15):
So just to kind of start like people I think
can very easily take ants for granted, they're very small. Uh,
they kind of typically mind their own business unless you
step in one of their nests, and there they happen
to be um uh imported red fire ants um which
you do not want to mess with UM. So they're
just kind of easy to overlook. But when you start
to kind of dig into things like the number of
(03:37):
ants on Earth or the kind of things they're responsible
for on Earth, you come to realize, like, ants actually
pretty much dominate the terrestrial ecosystems everywhere. They're apparently found
everywhere except for Antarctica. Despite the name. Uh yeah, they're
very hearty little creatures. They're a hundred and thirty million
(03:59):
years old from the Cretaceous period, so they actually survived
the Cretaceous tertiary extinction event, and you know, they've been
around forever. They will be around forever. Some parts of
the world they make up about half and this is
places where there are lots and lots of insects, and
they make up in some places half of the insects. Wow.
(04:21):
So like, if you just took all the insects in
one ecosystem and spread them all out, half of them
would be ants. Half of them would be ants. Don't
step on them. We said it before. Don't kick over
those ant hills. Kids, don't torch them with with lighters
and hairspray cans. You need to leave those ant hills alone, right.
One other surprising thing about their evolutionary history that I
(04:43):
was not hipp too until recently is that ants are
um closely related to wasps. In fact, they think that
they are evolved from wasps. Uh. And their closest one
of their closest relatives is the mud Dauber wasp. Yeah.
I mean, if you look at the wasp, but it
sort of looks like a intimidating flying ant. And ants
(05:04):
have stingers. A lot of them have venom, so I mean,
it's not like you just couldn't possibly, you know, accept
that fact. That's right. Uh. And that is a bit
of a misnomer because I still say bitten by an aunt,
I got an ant bite, But that's not what's going on.
You're actually getting stung. Uh. The stinger on an ant
a is a is a modified ovipositor. And the little
(05:28):
worker ants we're gonna talk all about this later, but
worker ants are sterile females. They can't produce eggs, so
they're ovipositors or stingers, and the male ants don't have
stingers and as you'll see, like if you're at all
familiar with our b episode or a WASPS episode, like,
a lot of this stuff is gonna seem really familiar
again because their ants are kind of pretty closely related
(05:49):
to those things. They're in the same um, the same
order hyman up tera as we'll see. But they do
all sorts of amazing things that we're gonna get into
all of this. But are uh. They turn the soil,
they move um uh materials and energy up and down underground.
They turn over more soil than the earthworm. Um. They're
(06:10):
extremely important little animals running around on Earth. So the
next time you see an aunt, especially after you hear
these two episodes, hopefully you'll salute them or at least
step over them or do something to to show a
little bit of respect. How many ants are there, so,
I've seen the one that can Ruse. Dave Ruse helped
(06:32):
us out with this one. The number he came up with,
I've seen pretty much almost everywhere, which is something on
the order of ten to the fifteen power adult ants
on Earth right now, So about a quadrillion, which is
it's not just a number of four year old says, no,
it's a thousand trillion to be precise, which is that
(06:52):
sounds more like a number than a four year old says, right,
if you, if you, I mean, if you think about it, Um,
how many humans are we do we have on right now?
Something like seven eight billion? I believe sure this is
a thousand trillion ants. And there's a lot of debate also,
chuck about which one weighs more calculating the bio mat
(07:13):
It's all over the place. One of the one of
the figures I've seen bandied about is that ants, if you,
if you wait everything, every living thing on Earth, ants
would make up somewhere between fifteen to of that weight,
which is a lot. But a lot of people say, well,
that's that just completely dwarfs how the biomass of humans.
And that's not necessarily true, so it's kind of up
(07:35):
in the air. Yeah, let's put it this way. If
all of the ants got together and they decided they
wanted to go to war with humanity, it would be
a pretty intimidating fight. I'm not sure who would win,
but humans would probably lay wasted themselves to to lay
wasted the ants, you know what I mean? Well, yeah,
and also I mean some ants especially those red fire ants.
(07:58):
They eat flesh like its are not all just herbivores,
they're they're generally omnivores, which means that they'll eat eat
flesh as well, which means they'll eat human flesh if
you'll stand still long enough and let them devour you.
You know what's that fire ant? They can strip a
frog in twelve hours to the bone to the bone. Yeah,
(08:20):
it's pretty amazing. So the thing we have going for us,
our legs are much longer than an ant's leg so
we can outrun them very quickly and just get away
from an ant, and then by the time we're out
of it's it's per view, it forgot we ever existed, probably, right,
unless there's another colony of three million ants waiting for you. Yeah,
(08:40):
the other side, depending on what part of Europe you're
in there very well, maybe too, as we'll see. Right,
So we're gonna you know, this is gonna follow the
order of kind of our usual animally insect the episodes,
except I think this one's going to have even more
just sort of random amazing facts and started along the way, right, Yeah,
I don't think we'll be able to help it, alright,
(09:01):
So I guess let's talk. I mean, let's go ahead
and start off with some of these amazing ant things.
If you study ants, you're a a mermacologist. And it
feels like we've said that recently, but I think I
might be thinking of something else. Dude, thinking of Eugene Mermon,
That's what I'm thinking. Oh man, I love that guy. Yeah,
(09:22):
he's a very lovable guy. What a good dude. I'm
so glad of his Bob's Burger's success. It couldn't happen
to do a nicer guy. But he's not an ant specialist. Uh,
let's maybe let's just start off with these aunt rafts. Yeah. Well,
that's one of the amazing things that people have figured
out about ants is if you drop especially um red
(09:42):
imported fire ants. They're just called fire ants in their
native South America, but here in North America there they
really are honestly called red imported fire ants, and they
if you drop them into water as like a ball,
they'll spread out and they will flatten themselves into a
raft that is actually a pretty great, well made raft.
(10:05):
And they do this, um just kind of without even
thinking about it. Yeah. So, I mean, these things can
be large they can be about as big as a
dinner plate. We're talking hundreds of thousands of ants. And
what they've learned. There was this researcher in particular at
Georgia Tech that you dug up, I mean not literally
dug up. He well, yeah, he was dead when I
meant reanimated him. Uh and said Mr David, who what
(10:30):
do you have to say? Uh? So he I think
he's from Georgia Tech. And he focused on these rafts
because it's such an amazing thing. And what they learned,
or one of the things he learned, was that when
these ants are building out this raft, they're like basically
walking over the other ants until they get to the
edge and then they're like, oh, well, I guess you know,
(10:52):
they communicate to each other, and we'll get to how
they communicate later, but they communicate to each other only
when they get to that edge. Hey, you gotta get
down here with us and make this thing larger. Yeah. Yeah,
they and they basically weave themselves into an interlocking pattern
to where they lay down perpendicular to the the ant
that is the part of the edge of the raft.
(11:14):
Then and then they become the part of the raft.
Sticking out right, yeah, exactly, and they connect themselves to
their fellow ants with multi multiple places with their interlocking arms.
They also push away at the same time, which allows
a lot of air in there, and these rafts can
float because there's something like air. But the the weave
(11:35):
is also so tight that the raft is waterproof, so
that even the ants on the bottom of the raft chuck,
will survive when they eventually hit dry land. Again. Yeah,
I think they kind of likened it to gortex basically. Yeah,
so that is that is one thing that one species
of ants can do, and they do this. Here's the thing,
(11:55):
Like you might say, well, that's really neat, that's amazing.
Ants don't have brains that can hold plans in their
heads like you and I do. Like, they can't read
a schematic. There's no schematics there for them. And in fact,
ants don't even technically have a leader. They just all
do these jobs and perform this work somehow we humans
have still yet to figure it out. But as each
(12:18):
little ant performs its own job, and you've got hundreds
of thousands of millions of ants all doing this job
following the same system, these really amazing larger and more
complex patterns emerge, and that's how you get things like
ant colonies and aunt rafts. And they do it again
without a leader and without a brain that could hold
a plan in their head. Yeah, I mean it's it's
(12:38):
a hundred and thirty million years of hard coding basically.
Like it makes me wonder if a hundred and thirty
million years ago, the ants we're like lucky to survive
that tertiary extinction, and we're like, we gotta get our
act together, guys. Yeah, we need to figure out how
to make rafts quick. We can't make rafts. We can't
do anything. Um Ants individually can swim some speech he
(13:00):
s can uh, they basically I mean they can float
and they basically do like a little ant paddle. They
like him to do a dog paddle. I don't think
they can swim like great distances. But if an ant,
if some species of ant happened to accidentally fall into water,
it's not necessarily the end of them. They're not a goner.
They don't need to be reanimated yet they don't. Should
(13:21):
we take a break already? Yeah? I think we can.
I mean it's a two part or we can do
whatever we want. All right, we'll take a break and
we'll talk about not rafts, but bridges right after this. Okay, Chuck,
(13:56):
you teased bridges. What about bridges? What do what do
bridges have to do with ants? Well, I mean, first
of all, all this stuff you should you should look
up images and videos of when you can, because talking
about it is one thing. But when you really see
this stuff happening, when you see an ant raft or
an ant bridge, it's pretty remarkable. Um. But army ants.
(14:16):
There in a species of ant that we're going to
talk more about as well later. But they are nomadic. Um.
Usually ants kind of route down in one place, but
these ants like to travel. And when they're traveling through
the forest, if they come across uh, if they're like
walking up a leaf and then they want to get
across to another leaf, they will form a little almost
(14:37):
at human bridge, they form a little ant bridge all
the way across and can support you know, it's just
tens of centimeters, which doesn't sound like much, but when
you're an aunt, it's it's remarkable. Yeah, So there's something
going on here. You you'll start to notice like there's
something about an ant when it says Okay, I'm coming.
I'm in water, and I'm on a ball of other
(14:57):
ants in water. Now that I've reached the edge of water,
or I need to interlock with my partner. Same thing
when they reach it an end in the road, a
gap between the road or the bridge or whatever they're
walking on, they have some sort of encoded instinct to
lay down and interlock with whoever's part of the bridge
behind them to form their own part of their bridge.
And then even more astounding than that kind of behavior
(15:18):
is the fact that they can support the weight of
the ants crawling over them, using them as a bridge,
and then once the traffic dies down, they climb back
up like in the opposite direction, they disassemble the bridge
on the other way and then go along their merry
way on the forest floor. Yeah, that's when they say
(15:38):
socialism doesn't work. Um, but I was wondering how they
So I saw an aunt bridge spanning between two leaves,
so it was off the ground. Uh, how does it?
And the only thing I could figure like, how does it?
How did the how do they all get across to
the other side at the end of this whole thing?
I don't I don't know. I don't because you think
(16:00):
it'd be like one of those rope bridges where you
cut one in and it goes right. Well, I think
that might be what happens. But I mean, this is
just a guess, but I have a feeling at the
end of that bridge they all just go really fast
as after it disattaches to get to And if they're
strong enough to hold each other across the span, then
I guess they're strong enough to hold that last you know,
(16:22):
a few centimeters as it dangles. Right. Yeah, they seem
to make like preternaturally intelligent use of things like physics
and enforces and loads and all sorts of stuff, um
and And to be honest, like, I don't feel like
a jackass for not knowing the answer to what you're saying,
because we do not understand ants very well. It's more
(16:45):
like we're we humans are in the the g whiz
phase of studying ants, like we can't we can see
what they're doing, but we can't really explain how they're
doing it in a lot of cases, which makes them
even more fascinating to me. But but Chuck, I suspect
and once we fully understand ants, it will revolutionize our
own behavior and the way that we see the world,
(17:07):
in the way that we act ourselves, because we're gonna
learn a lot from them. Oh yeah, but the problem
is humans don't won't work together like that, because ants
are a selfless society that works in concert to accomplish
a greater goal. Maybe we'll figure out how to use
them to like more efficiently deliver packages from e commerce
for us. Right, that's not flying them and dropping them
(17:29):
from a drone, even more efficient than that. All right,
So that's that's just a bit of a tease of
some of the amazing things some species of ants can do.
I think we need to get down to kind of
the basics, uh, like we do with all of our
insect friends and animal friends, and just talk about the
makeup of these little guys. Yeah, so their insects, like
(17:51):
like I said earlier, there from the order him up terra.
So there's bees, wasps, ants, they're all pretty much in
the same little group right there. But there's at least
ten thousand species of ants. Apparently, some botanists, not botanists
who don't know what they're talking about, we'll say fourteen thousand,
(18:11):
and then some anomalogists will say Yeah, the botanist was right.
Fourteen thousand is how many species of ants there are.
Botanists are like, why they keep cutting my leaves? Yeah,
can you please ask your aunts to stop doing that?
That's what the botanists say. Uh. If we're talking, and again,
you know, since we're not starting our own side podcast
all about ants, we're gonna talk about a few different species.
(18:32):
Aunt rant, by the way, aunt Rant not in rhnd
aunt Rant featuring the works of vine Rand instead of
listener male, who is the opposite of ants actually, But
we're gonna talk about the main ones you might find
here in North America. One of course, is the odorous
(18:52):
house aunt a k a. The sugar ant or the
coconut ant. These are you know, I love ants, but
these the problem uh ants in my life occasionally. Yeah,
these are the little black ants that you know, if
you have something out on your counter, can come into
(19:12):
your house and a nice little single file line and
we'll talk about those lines later, and they will eat
whatever you have sitting out on the counter, if it's
a little crumb of a twinkie, which makes me really
want to eat a twinkie. I haven't done that in
year's probably since our Twinky episodes, but it will. They
will send a lot of ants after it. Uh. And
they they're called odorous because apparently I've never really noticed
(19:35):
a smell. But if you kill them, they smell like
a rotten coconut or like a blue cheesy odor. Yeah,
and I'm like, rotten coconut doesn't help at all, Like
I don't understand when the rotten coconut smells like blue cheese.
I understand more that I get that's not a good smell.
But I have never ever smelled an ant that smelled
like blue cheese or even rotten coconut. I haven't either,
(19:56):
and I try not to kill any ants, but uh,
invading uh, sugar ants can be a problem. Yes, sugar ants,
That's what I've always heard them called too, So that's
the odorous house aunt is the same thing as a
sugar ant. Yeah right, okay, because we don't We're not
like very bourgeois. We keep our sugar just on a
mound on the kitchen counter. And we have a big
problem with those ants too. Yeah. What about your next favorite,
(20:21):
the pavement aunt? Uh? Yeah, the malcolmus Uh, the stand
of viches? Right? If only um, they are the ones
that you find like on the sidewalk, mainly maybe under rocks.
And I don't think there are a whole lot different
than the odorous house aunt are they I honestly don't know.
(20:43):
I think maybe they don't come in your house. They're
more like they just hang out outside on the sidewalk.
You know, Yes, I like that, Babs. Yeah, I think
I think what the describes is like where, Yeah, where
you'll find them like understones and sidewalks and all. Because
a lot of ants, like more than just the payment ant,
make their nest under concrete. I'm not sure why, maybe
(21:05):
just for protection or whatever from the elements, but there
are plenty of ants that that seem to appreciate concrete
slabs and for nesting. You got your carpenter ant, which
are those big daddies. Uh, they will bore into wood.
I don't know if there is a bigger problem as termites.
I haven't really found them to be in mind own life.
(21:27):
But yeah, no, those are the ones I grew up with.
They're like there's yes, they're enormous ants, but they're almost
like friendly, like they do not they don't sting you.
I think they might be a sting or list. They're
they're certainly not venomous. They'll like crawl on your finger
and just kind of explore and you almost can make
friends with them. Weirdly, but they're they're the friendliest ants
(21:50):
I've ever encountered. Yeah, I'll do that. If I see
a carpenter ant, I'll put my finger down and see
if it wants to come up and say. You know,
I've never seen one down here. I've only I've only
seen them in no I Oh, I didn't even know
they were down here. Oh oh yeah, we got carpenter ants.
So once I did know we're down here, I found
out the hard way. Um, right after we moved down here,
(22:10):
I realized that I was standing in a pile of
carpiner ants. And um, that was my introduction to them,
like maybe a month or two after we moved down
to the south. Oh no, no no carpenter ants or fire
fire ants. Did I say carpenter Yeah yeah, No, no,
I mean fire ants. Yeah, those are no good. Um again,
I'm not gonna like try and kill their nest or
(22:32):
anything like that. You just avoid them. Basically, It's true.
It is true. It is true. That's that's true. But
like you say, if you happen to step on one um,
they can be pretty aggressive though. They'll come after me,
and they will, they'll just keep going after you. And
again it looks like they're biting you because it hurts
and it stings, and they're they're like they're biting their mandibles.
(22:55):
But you can't feel whatever bite they're giving you with
their mandibles because they're too small. That stinger that that's
getting you in the venom that they produce inside. That's right,
no good, very painful. Leave a little red bumps, yeah,
to say the least, and then the itch and and
then you can't help but scratch them and you scratch
whatever little welt grows up after them. It's you scratch
(23:18):
that off. It's not it's not good. Did you get
stung a lot when you when you were standing in one, yes, yeah,
yeah it was. It was really bad. Mama got the
same treatment to when she was a little puppy and
she made the worst sound of ever heard in my life.
And luckily you may had just done some research on
fire ants and found that if you um are ever
(23:39):
covered in fire ants, do not wash them off, because
I think those might be the kind that swim, but
also they that will make them clean even further to
whatever they can on your body. To stand there and
take the pain. You brush them off till they're done.
But yeah, right, exactly, just eat the pain, right, It
won't last long, but you brush them off with your hand.
(24:00):
Do not use water, because it actually makes them like
they It's one of those things where they're like, oh
doubts with water, hang on even tighter, like they're making
a raft with your leg, and then they're biding even worse.
So luckily you had told me that like a week before,
and my instinct I was walking MO near this pond.
My instinct was to basically just dunker in this pond
reils get a bunch of pond water on it to
(24:21):
rint it off. And I stopped myself and just brushed
them off. But it would have made it so much worse.
But um Mo doesn't like if iire ants either. Now
Mo probably doesn't like being tunked in a pond either.
Just like like on a nice walk, you were going
to do what to me when I was um I
guess we should talk about you know, we're gonna we
(24:41):
gotta talk about mouth parts. This part of stuff you
should know. Uh, so you gotta. If we're gonna talk
about the ants, body will go from the head backward.
The head has those two antennae and they you know,
we're gonna say things like smell and here with quotation marks,
with air quotes, scare quotes like air quotes. But that's
(25:03):
the antennae is what they used to smell, or their
version of smelling. Uh. And pheromones and stuff like that,
which we'll get to in greater detail later on. Yeah,
which seemed to be basically the way that they communicate.
They communicate a few other ways, which we'll talk about,
but those pheromones are aces as far as ant communication goes,
it's pretty cool. They also have um. Sometimes they'll have
(25:24):
multiple kinds of eyes. Some ants have compound eyes, which
have tons of different lenses and you know, the image
on each lens is kind of combined into an image
in the ant's brain. Or other ones have much more
simple eyes called ocelli roselli um, which are they just
basically sense light. And then some ants have both um.
(25:46):
But the ones who just have a celli are are
almost blind. But it don't feel bad for the ants
because they are they can sense other things like pheromones
with their antennae. That's right. Uh, We've talked about the
mandibles a little bit, but those are the little pincers
at the fry and uh boys, some of the mandibles
and some of these species of ant are really large
(26:06):
and scary looking. I can't remember which one, but I
saw one picture. It may have been the Australian one
that just will kill you, basically the bulldog ant. It
might have been the bulldog ant. Yes, I saw that
picture to where it actually uses its mandibles to clamp
onto at the same time it's stinging you two man,
(26:28):
and it has taken at least three lives um in
Australia that's been documented. The bulldog ant just another Australian
thing that can kill you. But so as bad as
the bulldog ant is, apparently the bullet ant is has
the worst sting, not just of any aunt, but of
anything you could possibly be stung by in the world. Now,
(26:50):
what's the deal with that one? I saw? So there's
something called the Schmidt pain scale that was developed by
a guy named Justin Schmidt, and he he sically just
let himself get stung and then rated it and described
this stuff that was that's what he did. We're gonna
do a short stuff on it someday, but he gave
he gave the bullet ant the UM level four rating
(27:14):
on his words, which is four which is the highest,
which as bad as it gets UM. But he's he
described it as like walking over flaming charcoal with a
three inch nail embedded in your heel. That's what a
bullet ant sting feels like. And it's apparently other people
who have. If you go on YouTube, like survivalists and
outdoor people, they will go get They'll find out, like,
(27:36):
what's the most painful sting you can get, and then
they'll go purposely get stung by it and then describe it.
It's kind of like people eating like ghost peppers on
YouTube videos, but with with insects and apparently um most
people who have been stung by a bullet ant agree
like that's it's as bad as it gets. Cheeze. I
found this one aunt uh. If we're talking mandibles, the
(28:00):
uh that's had supposedly has the fastest bite in the world,
the Latin American trap jaw ant, and it uses it's
mandible to jump. So if you look at videos. They
basically thought this is what was happening, but they weren't
sure because these things can really leap like, you know,
three or four inches across the room, and they filmed
(28:21):
it with a super SlowMo up close camera, and their
their bite is so fast. It accelerates a hundred thousand
times the force of gravity a hundred and forty five
miles per hour with a force equaling five d times
its body weight. So I think it just pinches down
in the ground so fast it shoots the ant back
out of harm's way or whatever. Okay, So that's what
(28:43):
I was trying to figure out. If it does like
a cartwheel or summer salt, so it bites and propels
itself backward. Yeah, and they they will somersault, I mean,
because I don't think they have control, like after they
there's so much force and speed, Like I saw SloMo
videos of them, Like if they're falling down in a
little hole in the sand or something, they'll snap that
(29:04):
jaw and they will just slow mo back flip like
four or five inches out of that thing. And it
makes us did it should It's pretty amazing the trap giant,
It is amazing. Um so that's all in the head, right,
You got your eyes, your mandibles, your mouth. There's a
little mouth that I mean, the ant has to eat
and everything. They don't have ears, we should point out
(29:27):
if we're talking about the head, but they do here
by way of vibration. I think there's a an organ
below the knee that senses vibration below the knee. I
didn't see that one man. That just keeps getting better
and better. Okay, So you move a little further back
on the ant and what you'll find is the next
little segment of the body called the mesa soma, which
(29:49):
is not particularly interesting other than the fact that this
is where the ants three pairs of legs, it's six
legs come together on the ant. So it's super muscular
because is how the ant propels itself forward and does
all sorts of neat things, climbing hand to hand, combat,
all carrying, all sorts of stuff. So it's very muscular
(30:09):
part of the ant. The messisoma, yes, very mustily. Uh,
you have the petty hole, which is the basically the
waste of the ant between the messisoma and the gaster.
But if you see, you know, you can see an
ant kind of stand up at the waist where it's
little front legs are off the ground. It's it's bending
(30:32):
there at the pettyole. Yeah, it's kind of like you
know those busses that are like two busses but they're
connected by some weird like membrane and when they turn
a corner you're like, oh god, oh god, oh god.
But then they pull it off somehow. That to me
is like the pettyole for the ant. I've never ridden
on one of those buses. It's not it doesn't look
like it's held together any better when you're inside the bus. Yeah,
(30:54):
it looks a lot of city buses. I will say, though,
Traveler's tip Emily Nights, I think it's this Before we
took a bus in Manhattan one time, which we had
never done before. We were always on the subway or
in a cab or something, and we happened to be
somewhere and we needed to get somewhere else and we
saw the bus and I said, I think we can
just get on this thing and it'll take us where
(31:16):
we want to go. And it was like it was
like a it felt like a tourist bus. It's like
it's a great way to see the city bus. No, no, no,
I was like it was red and I sat on
the roof. They didn't have a roof on the toime. No,
it was a regular city bus. But that's my point
is like for very little money, the only difference is
(31:36):
there's not some dummy with a microphone telling you about everything,
but a knowledgeable bus driver will tell you where some
of the stars live. Yeah, or at least where you're
stopping next. Sure. Yeah, sit down and shut up. That's
what they say. Uh, where are we are? We think?
I think the petty all. We didn't mention that some
(31:56):
of them have two of these wastes. Yeah, the petiole.
If you want to show off as an ant, you
might have two of them. Be like, look at it.
I can go two different ways at once. Watch me go. Uh.
And then you have the gaster And that's that rear part.
That's where the organs are house. That's where the heart is.
Although it does not pump blood, it has a colorless liquid.
(32:20):
There are no lungs In't that right? Yeah? They breathe um.
They basically just do um oxygen exchange oxygen carbon dioxide
exchange to little holes that they have all over their
body called spiricles, that's right, and those are connected through
network of tubes. And I think just the ants movement
is what makes that air exchange happen. It's very cool. Yeah.
(32:43):
The gaster makes the mesasoma feel really inadequate as far
as no just importance and the stuff that it's doing,
you know, because it has so much important stuff in
it almost got the heart, It's got that stinger, the
reproductive organs. Some ants can spray formic acid from their gaster.
(33:04):
If you come up to an ant in your aunt's size,
it'll just spray it in your face with acid and
say get back wow. And then what if it's a
what do you say? A trapped orient? It'll just spring
away completely out of sight in the blink of an eye,
in the blink tupp pound. I yeah, I like trap
door though. I bet there's a trapped orient. But what's
(33:25):
what's it called the trap jaw? And oh? I called
a trap do orient? Yeah? But I bet there's a
I guarantee you there's a trapped orient. I was thinking
of Castlevania just then. Uh. They have two stomachs generally,
and they one is for eating and uh, you know,
digesting their own food, but there they also will share food,
(33:47):
and that's what that second stomach is for, because they
practice trophylaxis, is when they exchange food with their like
if you know, you go out and forage, but the
other ants are back there working on taking or the
queen or whatever they gotta eat, so they'll bring back
food in their second stomach and then transfer it either
mouth to mouth or mouth to anus. Pretty nice, Pretty nice.
(34:10):
It is very very kind. If you think about it,
you know, it really is. So one of the things
you talked about earlier. I think when we're talking about
ant bridges um and how they can support so much weight,
partially it's because they have, like most insects, kitan exo
skeleton that can um that can withstand forces like three
(34:31):
thousand times greater than the ant's body weight. So that's
how you let ants walk all over you if you're
another aunt without even batting an eyelash. That's right. And
they are super super super strong um. I mean, I
know there are a lot of insects that can do
whatever x times their body weight, but it's tough to
(34:52):
beat the ant. As a general rule, some of them
can carry up to fifty times their own body weight,
and apparently it's due to the due to their small size.
And the reading I got from this was that their
muscles are just dns. They have a greater cross sectional
area relative to their body size compared to other kind
of all other animals. So I think that's just like
(35:13):
a really dense muscle. That's pretty cool. So they're muscular
and they have a strong excess skeleton. They're just tough,
that's right. And like you said, they could be found everywhere.
Um So I say we take our second break now
and then come back and talk a little bit about
what ant eat, what aunt eat. We'll be right back, okay, Chuck.
(35:55):
So we came back to talk about what ant eat,
and um, I think I said earlier the answer omnivorous. Right,
So that means they'll eat flesh, Like don't fool yourself.
Given given a chance, if you lay still long enough,
or if somebody stakes you to the ground and slithers
you in honey around some red fire ants, they will
eat your body. It'll be so well, so will your dog,
(36:17):
your dog with two don't be mad at your dog.
Your dogs just trying to stay alive. And it's always
just been curious what you tasted like, you know, oh man,
anytime you hear the stories, it's just so disturbing. He
really is like the dog that eats the person that
was just like in a bad drunk or whatever. Oh wow,
passed out. No, I haven't. I'm not gonna tell it,
(36:40):
but I know I know someone personally who their dog
the eight part of their they're not there, but someone
they live their roommates foot because the roommates foot was
asleep and they were passed out like a down to
the close to the bone. Wow. I know. It's disturbing. Wow,
(37:03):
and you know somebody. Yeah, I'm not gonna get into
all that, but it's it's it's somebody I know. But
it's not like somebody you know from like the snoop
something like. It's a person, a personal human who told
me this happened to them and their roommate. It's not
a friend of a friend of a friend kind of thing.
What happens to the dog after that that they keep
(37:24):
the dog? Yeah, yeah, it's the whole thing afterwards. Alright,
good lord, the dog's fine. But I'll tell you, okay,
I did not see this counting at all. I didn't either,
because we're talking again about ants, and ants, like I said,
are omnivorous. Right. I don't even know how I got
on this. I think if you lay still long enough
and ant will eat you down to the bone. That's
(37:44):
what we're talking. So will your your friend's roommates. Uh well,
it's actually my friends dogged. But that's a difference. Oh man,
that makes it even worse. So wait, your friend's dog
at your friend's roommates foot Uh huh how do you
apologize for that? I don't know, man, it's a weird
(38:04):
scene over at this place. There's no cookie cake that
they make for that. Oh boy, the cookie cake might help,
but I mean help, sure, but you just have to
get a generic one. Maybe one of those milk bar
Jest buys that might do it. Really, anything from milk
(38:25):
bar would work. I agree. Uh so, honey, Due, let's
talk about honey Due. I think that's how we can
get back on track. Let's talk about it. Have you
ever tried to grow a citrus producing tree? Uh? No,
I want a lime tree or a lemon tree, but
we don't currently have one. Okay, So one of the
(38:46):
worst things that's going to happen to you when you
start growing that lime tree are a FIDS. And you're
gonna know you have a FIDS, not because you see
a bunch of aphids on there, but because all of
a sudden, there's like sticky stuff running all over your leads,
all over your branches, all over the try of your
little lime tree that you're trying to grow and never
did anything to anybody, but now all of a sudden,
it's really suffering. And what you will know is that
(39:08):
that you have an a FIT infestation. One of the
other day giveaways Chuck, that you have an a FIT
infestation on your future hypothetical lime tree is that it
will be covered with ants. And those ants are not
just they're eating that sticky stuff, they're actually what's what's
some atomologists referred to as um raising these aphids as
(39:29):
basically livestock. Yeah, so the honeydew, and I might I
hope I'm not getting this wrong. It sounds like what
they do is is the apid pierces the flow m
ducks and then this stuff goes straight through them, this
sap and goes in their mouth, comes out their butt
as honey dew. And that's what those ants are. That's
(39:51):
their delicious nectar, right. Yes, I don't understand why the
ants can't just go to where the aphids just were
and the honeydew that's coming out of there. So it
must have something to do with with the aphid, like
it's transformed by the aphid physiology. I guess it's a
transformative experience, like like the ants. Like, yes, I see
(40:12):
the raw ingredient there is coming out of the tree,
but I can only I'm all about the stuff that's
coming out of this a fid little bottom. That's what
I want to lap up. I guess you know you want,
you want that soft serve right out of the machine.
I guess. So they are crazy for this stuff so
much so that again that they they do so they
(40:35):
will herd a fids two different parts of the plant
um to say, okay, here, bite into this, and I'm
just gonna position my mouth right right behind you while
you do. Just let it flow right in my face. Um.
They will move them around the plant like herds at
at night or when it gets cold. They will actually
like herd the aphids into their own little nests and
(40:57):
protect them and defend them. Ladybug Love to eat a FIDS,
So ants defend uh aphids against ladybugs. Um. They and
then if they want an a FID to produce honeydew,
they will actually like stroke the a fit to be
like go ahead, let go, and then they eat the
honeydew that comes out of the a fit. But they
(41:18):
The fact is this, to me is one of fifty
facts of the podcast. They heard and treat and raise
and protect a fids just like humans do livestock like
cattle and pigs and things that we depend on for
for food. Yeah, those little, supposedly brainless little insects all
(41:39):
in the name of that sweet sweet butt juice. That's right, honeydew.
That is unbelievable. Yeah, I think that might top off
at least this episode's fact of the podcast. That's better
than rafts. If you ask me, I think you might
be right, dude. So, not only do they like honeydew
chuck um because answer omnivorous. I'm not sure if I
said that yet. Um, they will eat all sorts of
(42:00):
other stuff too, um, nectar, other insects. Um. They're apparently
one of the largest predators of um invertebrates wherever they live.
Now will they eat each other. Yeah, they'll actually cannibalize
eggs to to um for so their line will will
(42:22):
um will succeed over like a nestmates line in some cases.
I also saw this thing and maybe this is a
decent fact to sort of finish on that. Some ants
are called slave makers and they practice slave rating. So
if you're a slave maker, aunt you are specialized to
(42:42):
another kind of species. It's really close to your own,
and you basically capture them and force them to work
in your colony. What is going on? And they do it.
They they just go over there and they work in
their colony like it was their own, and all the
slave maker all they do is go and replenish that
(43:02):
labor force with more enslaved ants. That is crazy. You
have to just stop researching at a certain point. I did.
That's what I'm saying, aunt radiwise, it's eighteen hours long,
aunt Ran is coming in chuck from us. Is that
is that good for part one? I think so it
was a great one to finish on. Nice work. And
(43:22):
then as as this custom, we don't typically do a
listener mail for part one of a part two, right,
and we'll see you guys Thursday, I Guess for part
two of ants. If I'm not mistaken, and if you
want to get in touch with us, you can send
us an email send it off to stuff podcast at
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
(43:46):
production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. Four
Hey, everybody, chuck here real quick with some bad news
and sad news. Uh. Sketch Fest this year in San Francisco,
which is where we were gonna have our first live
show in two years here in a couple of weeks,
has been postponed. I believe they're looking to postponed it
by a whole year and kind of rebooked the whole
festival ideally, but you know, with what's going on around
(00:22):
the country with Omicron, they didn't feel like they could
press forward, and UH, as bummed as we are, we
think it's the right move as well. So, uh, if
you have tickets, just stay tuned for an announcement. I
think you will either probably be able to well I'm
not exactly sure what's going to happen with them, maybe
a refund maybe if you hold onto them, they're good
(00:42):
for next year because we're probably gonna look in the
same theater. But listen up for announcement soon. And again,
all apologies, we're super sad about it. We're really looking
forward to getting back out there again. But until further notice,
live shows are still on hold. All right, now here
we go with the show. Welcome to stuff you should
(01:04):
know A production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W.
Chuck Brian over there, and this is stuff you should know,
um one that I'm super super excited about and didn't
realize that I would be this excited about Chuck because
(01:27):
this is a Chuck pick and hats off to you, sir.
I'm surprised that, uh had you just never really thought
about ants much? Yeah, I mean I've looked at them before,
but I've never really researched him. I guess I've I've
seen documentaries and then that of course, the animated cartoon
Ants years ago kind of got me into it. And
(01:48):
I feel like every time I've watched a Nature documentary
about ants, I'm just like continually amazed. Yeah, I mean
they are like amazing. I knew they were amazing, I
just had no idea how amazing they were. Like so
much so we could conceivably do a spinoff podcast on
just ants, if you ask me, I'm willing to do that.
I'm just putting it out there right now. Hey, you
(02:11):
have fun and knock yourself out. No, no, it has
to bebably the first one to subscribe it has to
be both of us, I'm afraid. Uh, we do need
to thank the original inspiration for this though, Joey from Tucson.
Oh you remember that? Oh yeah, what was that a
listener mail that came in? No, this was during our
(02:32):
co Ed Oh yes, yes, yes, our friends at co
ed auctioned off a zoom with Josh and I and
some people were kind enough to donate some money and
we had a zoom and we hung out with everyone
and and and shot the s and Joey and his
mom were on there from Tucson, and Joey said, why
(02:52):
don't you do one on ants? And I said, all right, Joey,
we'll do one on ants. Yeah, and that's gonna be
a good one because joe is gonna get his money's
worth on this. But we're doing Joey, not just one
part on ants. We're doing a two parter on ants.
That's how cool they are. It's a doublet because you
know ants, like you said, we could do a four parter. Yeah.
(03:15):
So just to kind of start like people I think
can very easily take ants for granted, they're very small. Uh,
they kind of typically mind their own business unless you
step in one of their nests, and there they happen
to be um uh imported red fire ants um which
you do not want to mess with UM. So they're
just kind of easy to overlook. But when you start
to kind of dig into things like the number of
(03:37):
ants on Earth or the kind of things they're responsible
for on Earth, you come to realize, like, ants actually
pretty much dominate the terrestrial ecosystems everywhere. They're apparently found
everywhere except for Antarctica. Despite the name. Uh yeah, they're
very hearty little creatures. They're a hundred and thirty million
(03:59):
years old from the Cretaceous period, so they actually survived
the Cretaceous tertiary extinction event, and you know, they've been
around forever. They will be around forever. Some parts of
the world they make up about half and this is
places where there are lots and lots of insects, and
they make up in some places half of the insects. Wow.
(04:21):
So like, if you just took all the insects in
one ecosystem and spread them all out, half of them
would be ants. Half of them would be ants. Don't
step on them. We said it before. Don't kick over
those ant hills. Kids, don't torch them with with lighters
and hairspray cans. You need to leave those ant hills alone, right.
One other surprising thing about their evolutionary history that I
(04:43):
was not hipp too until recently is that ants are
um closely related to wasps. In fact, they think that
they are evolved from wasps. Uh. And their closest one
of their closest relatives is the mud Dauber wasp. Yeah.
I mean, if you look at the wasp, but it
sort of looks like a intimidating flying ant. And ants
(05:04):
have stingers. A lot of them have venom, so I mean,
it's not like you just couldn't possibly, you know, accept
that fact. That's right. Uh. And that is a bit
of a misnomer because I still say bitten by an aunt,
I got an ant bite, But that's not what's going on.
You're actually getting stung. Uh. The stinger on an ant
a is a is a modified ovipositor. And the little
(05:28):
worker ants we're gonna talk all about this later, but
worker ants are sterile females. They can't produce eggs, so
they're ovipositors or stingers, and the male ants don't have
stingers and as you'll see, like if you're at all
familiar with our b episode or a WASPS episode, like,
a lot of this stuff is gonna seem really familiar
again because their ants are kind of pretty closely related
(05:49):
to those things. They're in the same um, the same
order hyman up tera as we'll see. But they do
all sorts of amazing things that we're gonna get into
all of this. But are uh. They turn the soil,
they move um uh materials and energy up and down underground.
They turn over more soil than the earthworm. Um. They're
(06:10):
extremely important little animals running around on Earth. So the
next time you see an aunt, especially after you hear
these two episodes, hopefully you'll salute them or at least
step over them or do something to to show a
little bit of respect. How many ants are there, so,
I've seen the one that can Ruse. Dave Ruse helped
(06:32):
us out with this one. The number he came up with,
I've seen pretty much almost everywhere, which is something on
the order of ten to the fifteen power adult ants
on Earth right now, So about a quadrillion, which is
it's not just a number of four year old says, no,
it's a thousand trillion to be precise, which is that
(06:52):
sounds more like a number than a four year old says, right,
if you, if you, I mean, if you think about it, Um,
how many humans are we do we have on right now?
Something like seven eight billion? I believe sure this is
a thousand trillion ants. And there's a lot of debate also,
chuck about which one weighs more calculating the bio mat
(07:13):
It's all over the place. One of the one of
the figures I've seen bandied about is that ants, if you,
if you wait everything, every living thing on Earth, ants
would make up somewhere between fifteen to of that weight,
which is a lot. But a lot of people say, well,
that's that just completely dwarfs how the biomass of humans.
And that's not necessarily true, so it's kind of up
(07:35):
in the air. Yeah, let's put it this way. If
all of the ants got together and they decided they
wanted to go to war with humanity, it would be
a pretty intimidating fight. I'm not sure who would win,
but humans would probably lay wasted themselves to to lay
wasted the ants, you know what I mean? Well, yeah,
and also I mean some ants especially those red fire ants.
(07:58):
They eat flesh like its are not all just herbivores,
they're they're generally omnivores, which means that they'll eat eat
flesh as well, which means they'll eat human flesh if
you'll stand still long enough and let them devour you.
You know what's that fire ant? They can strip a
frog in twelve hours to the bone to the bone. Yeah,
(08:20):
it's pretty amazing. So the thing we have going for us,
our legs are much longer than an ant's leg so
we can outrun them very quickly and just get away
from an ant, and then by the time we're out
of it's it's per view, it forgot we ever existed, probably, right,
unless there's another colony of three million ants waiting for you. Yeah,
(08:40):
the other side, depending on what part of Europe you're
in there very well, maybe too, as we'll see. Right,
So we're gonna you know, this is gonna follow the
order of kind of our usual animally insect the episodes,
except I think this one's going to have even more
just sort of random amazing facts and started along the way, right, Yeah,
I don't think we'll be able to help it, alright,
(09:01):
So I guess let's talk. I mean, let's go ahead
and start off with some of these amazing ant things.
If you study ants, you're a a mermacologist. And it
feels like we've said that recently, but I think I
might be thinking of something else. Dude, thinking of Eugene Mermon,
That's what I'm thinking. Oh man, I love that guy. Yeah,
(09:22):
he's a very lovable guy. What a good dude. I'm
so glad of his Bob's Burger's success. It couldn't happen
to do a nicer guy. But he's not an ant specialist. Uh,
let's maybe let's just start off with these aunt rafts. Yeah. Well,
that's one of the amazing things that people have figured
out about ants is if you drop especially um red
(09:42):
imported fire ants. They're just called fire ants in their
native South America, but here in North America there they
really are honestly called red imported fire ants, and they
if you drop them into water as like a ball,
they'll spread out and they will flatten themselves into a
raft that is actually a pretty great, well made raft.
(10:05):
And they do this, um just kind of without even
thinking about it. Yeah. So, I mean, these things can
be large they can be about as big as a
dinner plate. We're talking hundreds of thousands of ants. And
what they've learned. There was this researcher in particular at
Georgia Tech that you dug up, I mean not literally
dug up. He well, yeah, he was dead when I
meant reanimated him. Uh and said Mr David, who what
(10:30):
do you have to say? Uh? So he I think
he's from Georgia Tech. And he focused on these rafts
because it's such an amazing thing. And what they learned,
or one of the things he learned, was that when
these ants are building out this raft, they're like basically
walking over the other ants until they get to the
edge and then they're like, oh, well, I guess you know,
(10:52):
they communicate to each other, and we'll get to how
they communicate later, but they communicate to each other only
when they get to that edge. Hey, you gotta get
down here with us and make this thing larger. Yeah. Yeah,
they and they basically weave themselves into an interlocking pattern
to where they lay down perpendicular to the the ant
that is the part of the edge of the raft.
(11:14):
Then and then they become the part of the raft.
Sticking out right, yeah, exactly, and they connect themselves to
their fellow ants with multi multiple places with their interlocking arms.
They also push away at the same time, which allows
a lot of air in there, and these rafts can
float because there's something like air. But the the weave
(11:35):
is also so tight that the raft is waterproof, so
that even the ants on the bottom of the raft chuck,
will survive when they eventually hit dry land. Again. Yeah,
I think they kind of likened it to gortex basically. Yeah,
so that is that is one thing that one species
of ants can do, and they do this. Here's the thing,
(11:55):
Like you might say, well, that's really neat, that's amazing.
Ants don't have brains that can hold plans in their
heads like you and I do. Like, they can't read
a schematic. There's no schematics there for them. And in fact,
ants don't even technically have a leader. They just all
do these jobs and perform this work somehow we humans
have still yet to figure it out. But as each
(12:18):
little ant performs its own job, and you've got hundreds
of thousands of millions of ants all doing this job
following the same system, these really amazing larger and more
complex patterns emerge, and that's how you get things like
ant colonies and aunt rafts. And they do it again
without a leader and without a brain that could hold
a plan in their head. Yeah, I mean it's it's
(12:38):
a hundred and thirty million years of hard coding basically.
Like it makes me wonder if a hundred and thirty
million years ago, the ants we're like lucky to survive
that tertiary extinction, and we're like, we gotta get our
act together, guys. Yeah, we need to figure out how
to make rafts quick. We can't make rafts. We can't
do anything. Um Ants individually can swim some speech he
(13:00):
s can uh, they basically I mean they can float
and they basically do like a little ant paddle. They
like him to do a dog paddle. I don't think
they can swim like great distances. But if an ant,
if some species of ant happened to accidentally fall into water,
it's not necessarily the end of them. They're not a goner.
They don't need to be reanimated yet they don't. Should
(13:21):
we take a break already? Yeah? I think we can.
I mean it's a two part or we can do
whatever we want. All right, we'll take a break and
we'll talk about not rafts, but bridges right after this. Okay, Chuck,
(13:56):
you teased bridges. What about bridges? What do what do
bridges have to do with ants? Well, I mean, first
of all, all this stuff you should you should look
up images and videos of when you can, because talking
about it is one thing. But when you really see
this stuff happening, when you see an ant raft or
an ant bridge, it's pretty remarkable. Um. But army ants.
(14:16):
There in a species of ant that we're going to
talk more about as well later. But they are nomadic. Um.
Usually ants kind of route down in one place, but
these ants like to travel. And when they're traveling through
the forest, if they come across uh, if they're like
walking up a leaf and then they want to get
across to another leaf, they will form a little almost
(14:37):
at human bridge, they form a little ant bridge all
the way across and can support you know, it's just
tens of centimeters, which doesn't sound like much, but when
you're an aunt, it's it's remarkable. Yeah, So there's something
going on here. You you'll start to notice like there's
something about an ant when it says Okay, I'm coming.
I'm in water, and I'm on a ball of other
(14:57):
ants in water. Now that I've reached the edge of water,
or I need to interlock with my partner. Same thing
when they reach it an end in the road, a
gap between the road or the bridge or whatever they're
walking on, they have some sort of encoded instinct to
lay down and interlock with whoever's part of the bridge
behind them to form their own part of their bridge.
And then even more astounding than that kind of behavior
(15:18):
is the fact that they can support the weight of
the ants crawling over them, using them as a bridge,
and then once the traffic dies down, they climb back
up like in the opposite direction, they disassemble the bridge
on the other way and then go along their merry
way on the forest floor. Yeah, that's when they say
(15:38):
socialism doesn't work. Um, but I was wondering how they
So I saw an aunt bridge spanning between two leaves,
so it was off the ground. Uh, how does it?
And the only thing I could figure like, how does it?
How did the how do they all get across to
the other side at the end of this whole thing?
I don't I don't know. I don't because you think
(16:00):
it'd be like one of those rope bridges where you
cut one in and it goes right. Well, I think
that might be what happens. But I mean, this is
just a guess, but I have a feeling at the
end of that bridge they all just go really fast
as after it disattaches to get to And if they're
strong enough to hold each other across the span, then
I guess they're strong enough to hold that last you know,
(16:22):
a few centimeters as it dangles. Right. Yeah, they seem
to make like preternaturally intelligent use of things like physics
and enforces and loads and all sorts of stuff, um
and And to be honest, like, I don't feel like
a jackass for not knowing the answer to what you're saying,
because we do not understand ants very well. It's more
(16:45):
like we're we humans are in the the g whiz
phase of studying ants, like we can't we can see
what they're doing, but we can't really explain how they're
doing it in a lot of cases, which makes them
even more fascinating to me. But but Chuck, I suspect
and once we fully understand ants, it will revolutionize our
own behavior and the way that we see the world,
(17:07):
in the way that we act ourselves, because we're gonna
learn a lot from them. Oh yeah, but the problem
is humans don't won't work together like that, because ants
are a selfless society that works in concert to accomplish
a greater goal. Maybe we'll figure out how to use
them to like more efficiently deliver packages from e commerce
for us. Right, that's not flying them and dropping them
(17:29):
from a drone, even more efficient than that. All right,
So that's that's just a bit of a tease of
some of the amazing things some species of ants can do.
I think we need to get down to kind of
the basics, uh, like we do with all of our
insect friends and animal friends, and just talk about the
makeup of these little guys. Yeah, so their insects, like
(17:51):
like I said earlier, there from the order him up terra.
So there's bees, wasps, ants, they're all pretty much in
the same little group right there. But there's at least
ten thousand species of ants. Apparently, some botanists, not botanists
who don't know what they're talking about, we'll say fourteen thousand,
(18:11):
and then some anomalogists will say Yeah, the botanist was right.
Fourteen thousand is how many species of ants there are.
Botanists are like, why they keep cutting my leaves? Yeah,
can you please ask your aunts to stop doing that?
That's what the botanists say. Uh. If we're talking, and again,
you know, since we're not starting our own side podcast
all about ants, we're gonna talk about a few different species.
(18:32):
Aunt rant, by the way, aunt Rant not in rhnd
aunt Rant featuring the works of vine Rand instead of
listener male, who is the opposite of ants actually, But
we're gonna talk about the main ones you might find
here in North America. One of course, is the odorous
(18:52):
house aunt a k a. The sugar ant or the
coconut ant. These are you know, I love ants, but
these the problem uh ants in my life occasionally. Yeah,
these are the little black ants that you know, if
you have something out on your counter, can come into
(19:12):
your house and a nice little single file line and
we'll talk about those lines later, and they will eat
whatever you have sitting out on the counter, if it's
a little crumb of a twinkie, which makes me really
want to eat a twinkie. I haven't done that in
year's probably since our Twinky episodes, but it will. They
will send a lot of ants after it. Uh. And
they they're called odorous because apparently I've never really noticed
(19:35):
a smell. But if you kill them, they smell like
a rotten coconut or like a blue cheesy odor. Yeah,
and I'm like, rotten coconut doesn't help at all, Like
I don't understand when the rotten coconut smells like blue cheese.
I understand more that I get that's not a good smell.
But I have never ever smelled an ant that smelled
like blue cheese or even rotten coconut. I haven't either,
(19:56):
and I try not to kill any ants, but uh,
invading uh, sugar ants can be a problem. Yes, sugar ants,
That's what I've always heard them called too, So that's
the odorous house aunt is the same thing as a
sugar ant. Yeah right, okay, because we don't We're not
like very bourgeois. We keep our sugar just on a
mound on the kitchen counter. And we have a big
problem with those ants too. Yeah. What about your next favorite,
(20:21):
the pavement aunt? Uh? Yeah, the malcolmus Uh, the stand
of viches? Right? If only um, they are the ones
that you find like on the sidewalk, mainly maybe under rocks.
And I don't think there are a whole lot different
than the odorous house aunt are they I honestly don't know.
(20:43):
I think maybe they don't come in your house. They're
more like they just hang out outside on the sidewalk.
You know, Yes, I like that, Babs. Yeah, I think
I think what the describes is like where, Yeah, where
you'll find them like understones and sidewalks and all. Because
a lot of ants, like more than just the payment ant,
make their nest under concrete. I'm not sure why, maybe
(21:05):
just for protection or whatever from the elements, but there
are plenty of ants that that seem to appreciate concrete
slabs and for nesting. You got your carpenter ant, which
are those big daddies. Uh, they will bore into wood.
I don't know if there is a bigger problem as termites.
I haven't really found them to be in mind own life.
(21:27):
But yeah, no, those are the ones I grew up with.
They're like there's yes, they're enormous ants, but they're almost
like friendly, like they do not they don't sting you.
I think they might be a sting or list. They're
they're certainly not venomous. They'll like crawl on your finger
and just kind of explore and you almost can make
friends with them. Weirdly, but they're they're the friendliest ants
(21:50):
I've ever encountered. Yeah, I'll do that. If I see
a carpenter ant, I'll put my finger down and see
if it wants to come up and say. You know,
I've never seen one down here. I've only I've only
seen them in no I Oh, I didn't even know
they were down here. Oh oh yeah, we got carpenter ants.
So once I did know we're down here, I found
out the hard way. Um, right after we moved down here,
(22:10):
I realized that I was standing in a pile of
carpiner ants. And um, that was my introduction to them,
like maybe a month or two after we moved down
to the south. Oh no, no no carpenter ants or fire
fire ants. Did I say carpenter Yeah yeah, No, no,
I mean fire ants. Yeah, those are no good. Um again,
I'm not gonna like try and kill their nest or
(22:32):
anything like that. You just avoid them. Basically, It's true.
It is true. It is true. That's that's true. But
like you say, if you happen to step on one um,
they can be pretty aggressive though. They'll come after me,
and they will, they'll just keep going after you. And
again it looks like they're biting you because it hurts
and it stings, and they're they're like they're biting their mandibles.
(22:55):
But you can't feel whatever bite they're giving you with
their mandibles because they're too small. That stinger that that's
getting you in the venom that they produce inside. That's right,
no good, very painful. Leave a little red bumps, yeah,
to say the least, and then the itch and and
then you can't help but scratch them and you scratch
whatever little welt grows up after them. It's you scratch
(23:18):
that off. It's not it's not good. Did you get
stung a lot when you when you were standing in one, yes, yeah,
yeah it was. It was really bad. Mama got the
same treatment to when she was a little puppy and
she made the worst sound of ever heard in my life.
And luckily you may had just done some research on
fire ants and found that if you um are ever
(23:39):
covered in fire ants, do not wash them off, because
I think those might be the kind that swim, but
also they that will make them clean even further to
whatever they can on your body. To stand there and
take the pain. You brush them off till they're done.
But yeah, right, exactly, just eat the pain, right, It
won't last long, but you brush them off with your hand.
(24:00):
Do not use water, because it actually makes them like
they It's one of those things where they're like, oh
doubts with water, hang on even tighter, like they're making
a raft with your leg, and then they're biding even worse.
So luckily you had told me that like a week before,
and my instinct I was walking MO near this pond.
My instinct was to basically just dunker in this pond
reils get a bunch of pond water on it to
(24:21):
rint it off. And I stopped myself and just brushed
them off. But it would have made it so much worse.
But um Mo doesn't like if iire ants either. Now
Mo probably doesn't like being tunked in a pond either.
Just like like on a nice walk, you were going
to do what to me when I was um I
guess we should talk about you know, we're gonna we
(24:41):
gotta talk about mouth parts. This part of stuff you
should know. Uh, so you gotta. If we're gonna talk
about the ants, body will go from the head backward.
The head has those two antennae and they you know,
we're gonna say things like smell and here with quotation marks,
with air quotes, scare quotes like air quotes. But that's
(25:03):
the antennae is what they used to smell, or their
version of smelling. Uh. And pheromones and stuff like that,
which we'll get to in greater detail later on. Yeah,
which seemed to be basically the way that they communicate.
They communicate a few other ways, which we'll talk about,
but those pheromones are aces as far as ant communication goes,
it's pretty cool. They also have um. Sometimes they'll have
(25:24):
multiple kinds of eyes. Some ants have compound eyes, which
have tons of different lenses and you know, the image
on each lens is kind of combined into an image
in the ant's brain. Or other ones have much more
simple eyes called ocelli roselli um, which are they just
basically sense light. And then some ants have both um.
(25:46):
But the ones who just have a celli are are
almost blind. But it don't feel bad for the ants
because they are they can sense other things like pheromones
with their antennae. That's right. Uh, We've talked about the
mandibles a little bit, but those are the little pincers
at the fry and uh boys, some of the mandibles
and some of these species of ant are really large
(26:06):
and scary looking. I can't remember which one, but I
saw one picture. It may have been the Australian one
that just will kill you, basically the bulldog ant. It
might have been the bulldog ant. Yes, I saw that
picture to where it actually uses its mandibles to clamp
onto at the same time it's stinging you two man,
(26:28):
and it has taken at least three lives um in
Australia that's been documented. The bulldog ant just another Australian
thing that can kill you. But so as bad as
the bulldog ant is, apparently the bullet ant is has
the worst sting, not just of any aunt, but of
anything you could possibly be stung by in the world. Now,
(26:50):
what's the deal with that one? I saw? So there's
something called the Schmidt pain scale that was developed by
a guy named Justin Schmidt, and he he sically just
let himself get stung and then rated it and described
this stuff that was that's what he did. We're gonna
do a short stuff on it someday, but he gave
he gave the bullet ant the UM level four rating
(27:14):
on his words, which is four which is the highest,
which as bad as it gets UM. But he's he
described it as like walking over flaming charcoal with a
three inch nail embedded in your heel. That's what a
bullet ant sting feels like. And it's apparently other people
who have. If you go on YouTube, like survivalists and
outdoor people, they will go get They'll find out, like,
(27:36):
what's the most painful sting you can get, and then
they'll go purposely get stung by it and then describe it.
It's kind of like people eating like ghost peppers on
YouTube videos, but with with insects and apparently um most
people who have been stung by a bullet ant agree
like that's it's as bad as it gets. Cheeze. I
found this one aunt uh. If we're talking mandibles, the
(28:00):
uh that's had supposedly has the fastest bite in the world,
the Latin American trap jaw ant, and it uses it's
mandible to jump. So if you look at videos. They
basically thought this is what was happening, but they weren't
sure because these things can really leap like, you know,
three or four inches across the room, and they filmed
(28:21):
it with a super SlowMo up close camera, and their
their bite is so fast. It accelerates a hundred thousand
times the force of gravity a hundred and forty five
miles per hour with a force equaling five d times
its body weight. So I think it just pinches down
in the ground so fast it shoots the ant back
out of harm's way or whatever. Okay, So that's what
(28:43):
I was trying to figure out. If it does like
a cartwheel or summer salt, so it bites and propels
itself backward. Yeah, and they they will somersault, I mean,
because I don't think they have control, like after they
there's so much force and speed, Like I saw SloMo
videos of them, Like if they're falling down in a
little hole in the sand or something, they'll snap that
(29:04):
jaw and they will just slow mo back flip like
four or five inches out of that thing. And it
makes us did it should It's pretty amazing the trap giant,
It is amazing. Um so that's all in the head, right,
You got your eyes, your mandibles, your mouth. There's a
little mouth that I mean, the ant has to eat
and everything. They don't have ears, we should point out
(29:27):
if we're talking about the head, but they do here
by way of vibration. I think there's a an organ
below the knee that senses vibration below the knee. I
didn't see that one man. That just keeps getting better
and better. Okay, So you move a little further back
on the ant and what you'll find is the next
little segment of the body called the mesa soma, which
(29:49):
is not particularly interesting other than the fact that this
is where the ants three pairs of legs, it's six
legs come together on the ant. So it's super muscular
because is how the ant propels itself forward and does
all sorts of neat things, climbing hand to hand, combat,
all carrying, all sorts of stuff. So it's very muscular
(30:09):
part of the ant. The messisoma, yes, very mustily. Uh,
you have the petty hole, which is the basically the
waste of the ant between the messisoma and the gaster.
But if you see, you know, you can see an
ant kind of stand up at the waist where it's
little front legs are off the ground. It's it's bending
(30:32):
there at the pettyole. Yeah, it's kind of like you
know those busses that are like two busses but they're
connected by some weird like membrane and when they turn
a corner you're like, oh god, oh god, oh god.
But then they pull it off somehow. That to me
is like the pettyole for the ant. I've never ridden
on one of those buses. It's not it doesn't look
like it's held together any better when you're inside the bus. Yeah,
(30:54):
it looks a lot of city buses. I will say, though,
Traveler's tip Emily Nights, I think it's this Before we
took a bus in Manhattan one time, which we had
never done before. We were always on the subway or
in a cab or something, and we happened to be
somewhere and we needed to get somewhere else and we
saw the bus and I said, I think we can
just get on this thing and it'll take us where
(31:16):
we want to go. And it was like it was
like a it felt like a tourist bus. It's like
it's a great way to see the city bus. No, no, no,
I was like it was red and I sat on
the roof. They didn't have a roof on the toime. No,
it was a regular city bus. But that's my point
is like for very little money, the only difference is
(31:36):
there's not some dummy with a microphone telling you about everything,
but a knowledgeable bus driver will tell you where some
of the stars live. Yeah, or at least where you're
stopping next. Sure. Yeah, sit down and shut up. That's
what they say. Uh, where are we are? We think?
I think the petty all. We didn't mention that some
(31:56):
of them have two of these wastes. Yeah, the petiole.
If you want to show off as an ant, you
might have two of them. Be like, look at it.
I can go two different ways at once. Watch me go. Uh.
And then you have the gaster And that's that rear part.
That's where the organs are house. That's where the heart is.
Although it does not pump blood, it has a colorless liquid.
(32:20):
There are no lungs In't that right? Yeah? They breathe um.
They basically just do um oxygen exchange oxygen carbon dioxide
exchange to little holes that they have all over their
body called spiricles, that's right, and those are connected through
network of tubes. And I think just the ants movement
is what makes that air exchange happen. It's very cool. Yeah.
(32:43):
The gaster makes the mesasoma feel really inadequate as far
as no just importance and the stuff that it's doing,
you know, because it has so much important stuff in
it almost got the heart, It's got that stinger, the
reproductive organs. Some ants can spray formic acid from their gaster.
(33:04):
If you come up to an ant in your aunt's size,
it'll just spray it in your face with acid and
say get back wow. And then what if it's a
what do you say? A trapped orient? It'll just spring
away completely out of sight in the blink of an eye,
in the blink tupp pound. I yeah, I like trap
door though. I bet there's a trapped orient. But what's
(33:25):
what's it called the trap jaw? And oh? I called
a trap do orient? Yeah? But I bet there's a
I guarantee you there's a trapped orient. I was thinking
of Castlevania just then. Uh. They have two stomachs generally,
and they one is for eating and uh, you know,
digesting their own food, but there they also will share food,
(33:47):
and that's what that second stomach is for, because they
practice trophylaxis, is when they exchange food with their like
if you know, you go out and forage, but the
other ants are back there working on taking or the
queen or whatever they gotta eat, so they'll bring back
food in their second stomach and then transfer it either
mouth to mouth or mouth to anus. Pretty nice, Pretty nice.
(34:10):
It is very very kind. If you think about it,
you know, it really is. So one of the things
you talked about earlier. I think when we're talking about
ant bridges um and how they can support so much weight,
partially it's because they have, like most insects, kitan exo
skeleton that can um that can withstand forces like three
(34:31):
thousand times greater than the ant's body weight. So that's
how you let ants walk all over you if you're
another aunt without even batting an eyelash. That's right. And
they are super super super strong um. I mean, I
know there are a lot of insects that can do
whatever x times their body weight, but it's tough to
(34:52):
beat the ant. As a general rule, some of them
can carry up to fifty times their own body weight,
and apparently it's due to the due to their small size.
And the reading I got from this was that their
muscles are just dns. They have a greater cross sectional
area relative to their body size compared to other kind
of all other animals. So I think that's just like
(35:13):
a really dense muscle. That's pretty cool. So they're muscular
and they have a strong excess skeleton. They're just tough,
that's right. And like you said, they could be found everywhere.
Um So I say we take our second break now
and then come back and talk a little bit about
what ant eat, what aunt eat. We'll be right back, okay, Chuck.
(35:55):
So we came back to talk about what ant eat,
and um, I think I said earlier the answer omnivorous. Right,
So that means they'll eat flesh, Like don't fool yourself.
Given given a chance, if you lay still long enough,
or if somebody stakes you to the ground and slithers
you in honey around some red fire ants, they will
eat your body. It'll be so well, so will your dog,
(36:17):
your dog with two don't be mad at your dog.
Your dogs just trying to stay alive. And it's always
just been curious what you tasted like, you know, oh man,
anytime you hear the stories, it's just so disturbing. He
really is like the dog that eats the person that
was just like in a bad drunk or whatever. Oh wow,
passed out. No, I haven't. I'm not gonna tell it,
(36:40):
but I know I know someone personally who their dog
the eight part of their they're not there, but someone
they live their roommates foot because the roommates foot was
asleep and they were passed out like a down to
the close to the bone. Wow. I know. It's disturbing. Wow,
(37:03):
and you know somebody. Yeah, I'm not gonna get into
all that, but it's it's it's somebody I know. But
it's not like somebody you know from like the snoop
something like. It's a person, a personal human who told
me this happened to them and their roommate. It's not
a friend of a friend of a friend kind of thing.
What happens to the dog after that that they keep
(37:24):
the dog? Yeah, yeah, it's the whole thing afterwards. Alright,
good lord, the dog's fine. But I'll tell you, okay,
I did not see this counting at all. I didn't either,
because we're talking again about ants, and ants, like I said,
are omnivorous. Right. I don't even know how I got
on this. I think if you lay still long enough
and ant will eat you down to the bone. That's
(37:44):
what we're talking. So will your your friend's roommates. Uh well,
it's actually my friends dogged. But that's a difference. Oh man,
that makes it even worse. So wait, your friend's dog
at your friend's roommates foot Uh huh how do you
apologize for that? I don't know, man, it's a weird
(38:04):
scene over at this place. There's no cookie cake that
they make for that. Oh boy, the cookie cake might help,
but I mean help, sure, but you just have to
get a generic one. Maybe one of those milk bar
Jest buys that might do it. Really, anything from milk
(38:25):
bar would work. I agree. Uh so, honey, Due, let's
talk about honey Due. I think that's how we can
get back on track. Let's talk about it. Have you
ever tried to grow a citrus producing tree? Uh? No,
I want a lime tree or a lemon tree, but
we don't currently have one. Okay, So one of the
(38:46):
worst things that's going to happen to you when you
start growing that lime tree are a FIDS. And you're
gonna know you have a FIDS, not because you see
a bunch of aphids on there, but because all of
a sudden, there's like sticky stuff running all over your leads,
all over your branches, all over the try of your
little lime tree that you're trying to grow and never
did anything to anybody, but now all of a sudden,
it's really suffering. And what you will know is that
(39:08):
that you have an a FIT infestation. One of the
other day giveaways Chuck, that you have an a FIT
infestation on your future hypothetical lime tree is that it
will be covered with ants. And those ants are not
just they're eating that sticky stuff, they're actually what's what's
some atomologists referred to as um raising these aphids as
(39:29):
basically livestock. Yeah, so the honeydew, and I might I
hope I'm not getting this wrong. It sounds like what
they do is is the apid pierces the flow m
ducks and then this stuff goes straight through them, this
sap and goes in their mouth, comes out their butt
as honey dew. And that's what those ants are. That's
(39:51):
their delicious nectar, right. Yes, I don't understand why the
ants can't just go to where the aphids just were
and the honeydew that's coming out of there. So it
must have something to do with with the aphid, like
it's transformed by the aphid physiology. I guess it's a
transformative experience, like like the ants. Like, yes, I see
(40:12):
the raw ingredient there is coming out of the tree,
but I can only I'm all about the stuff that's
coming out of this a fid little bottom. That's what
I want to lap up. I guess you know you want,
you want that soft serve right out of the machine.
I guess. So they are crazy for this stuff so
much so that again that they they do so they
(40:35):
will herd a fids two different parts of the plant
um to say, okay, here, bite into this, and I'm
just gonna position my mouth right right behind you while
you do. Just let it flow right in my face. Um.
They will move them around the plant like herds at
at night or when it gets cold. They will actually
like herd the aphids into their own little nests and
(40:57):
protect them and defend them. Ladybug Love to eat a FIDS,
So ants defend uh aphids against ladybugs. Um. They and
then if they want an a FID to produce honeydew,
they will actually like stroke the a fit to be
like go ahead, let go, and then they eat the
honeydew that comes out of the a fit. But they
(41:18):
The fact is this, to me is one of fifty
facts of the podcast. They heard and treat and raise
and protect a fids just like humans do livestock like
cattle and pigs and things that we depend on for
for food. Yeah, those little, supposedly brainless little insects all
(41:39):
in the name of that sweet sweet butt juice. That's right, honeydew.
That is unbelievable. Yeah, I think that might top off
at least this episode's fact of the podcast. That's better
than rafts. If you ask me, I think you might
be right, dude. So, not only do they like honeydew
chuck um because answer omnivorous. I'm not sure if I
said that yet. Um, they will eat all sorts of
(42:00):
other stuff too, um, nectar, other insects. Um. They're apparently
one of the largest predators of um invertebrates wherever they live.
Now will they eat each other. Yeah, they'll actually cannibalize
eggs to to um for so their line will will
(42:22):
um will succeed over like a nestmates line in some cases.
I also saw this thing and maybe this is a
decent fact to sort of finish on that. Some ants
are called slave makers and they practice slave rating. So
if you're a slave maker, aunt you are specialized to
(42:42):
another kind of species. It's really close to your own,
and you basically capture them and force them to work
in your colony. What is going on? And they do it.
They they just go over there and they work in
their colony like it was their own, and all the
slave maker all they do is go and replenish that
(43:02):
labor force with more enslaved ants. That is crazy. You
have to just stop researching at a certain point. I did.
That's what I'm saying, aunt radiwise, it's eighteen hours long,
aunt Ran is coming in chuck from us. Is that
is that good for part one? I think so it
was a great one to finish on. Nice work. And
(43:22):
then as as this custom, we don't typically do a
listener mail for part one of a part two, right,
and we'll see you guys Thursday, I Guess for part
two of ants. If I'm not mistaken, and if you
want to get in touch with us, you can send
us an email send it off to stuff podcast at
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
(43:46):
production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. Four
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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