(classical music)
- Hey, so we've all seen ants.
Here's a picture of one
somewhere on the screen.
Doesn't look like much, right?
Alone, a single ant might
not feel like something
to write home about.
Most times she'll be pretty small
and she'll be a she.
She'll also be fairly vulnerable
and non-threatening,
but here's the thing.
Ants are social insects
and in large numbers they
can be a lot of trouble.
Ant abilities differ widely
from one species to the next.
And there are more than
12,000 known species.
Again, that's just the ones we know about.
They out number us a million to one.
Coordinating massive operations to provide
food, shelter, and
defense to their colony.
As any myrmecologist will tell you -
that's the fancy name for ant expert -
chief among an ant's superpowers
is its ability to communicate.
Ants primarily communicate
through the release of
chemicals called pheromones.
Generally the glands
responsible for these pheromones
are located in the head,
thorax, gaster, and legs.
They're usually released
from the mandibles,
gaster, and the cuticle.
That's the hard outer
layer of an ant's body.
Ants detect these pheromones
using their antennae
and truth be told,
they're pretty good at it.
So let's say you're at a picnic.
You're unwrapping, I don't know,
a sandwich or whatever.
A roast beef panini.
And you see one lone ant.
That is a scout that is going to return
with a massive wave of coordinated,
tiny fiends on a mad quest
to get your roast beef panini
by any means necessary.
But here's how the scout hips
the rest of her crew
to the potential heist.
As she's foraging, she's
laying down pheromones,
kinda like how Hansel and
Gretel laid down bread crumbs
in that fairytale,
which was,
what's the name of that one?
Hansel and Gretel were in it.
All right, well, when and if she does find
a large source of food,
she hightails back to
the ant headquarters,
releasing more of the pheromone
along the way,
creating a trail that other
ants in her colony can follow.
The better the food source,
the stronger this trail.
As other foragers arrive to assist,
they also lay down pheromones
and reinforce the trail.
And like everything with ants,
the way they treat these trails
really depends on their species.
Some species of ants will only follow
their own chemical trails,
while others will follow any one.
They'll pick up on pheromones
from other ant species.
Ants also communicate by
touching each other's cuticles
and deriving information about each other
from hydrocarbons they find there.
The different kinds of
cuticular hydrocarbons -
and there are a lot -
each have their own odor,
indicating numerous things
about the individual ant,
from its home colony,
to the task it's assigned, like foraging.
Ants also communicate through movement,
like vibration or touching each
other during tandem running,
which is interesting enough
to be its own episode.
Leaf-cutter ants, for instance,
vibrate to indicate things like danger
or a particularly tasty leaf.
There's one very important
distinction we should make here.
Ants do not communicate directly.
Instead they use what's called
modulatory communication.
This means they don't decide consciously
to send out a message saying,
"Hey, go find some food my dudettes."
And other ants don't think,
"Ah, crap, it's hot
outside but all right."
The signals that ants send
only increase the probability
that other ants will change their behavior
in response to that stimuli.
And as we can see,
it is working out pretty well for them.
This leads me to a question.
Who is more successful overall?
Ants
or humans?
Thanks so much for watching.
Let us know what you think in the comments
and stay tuned for more brain stuff.
