Fire Ants - Most succesful creature that has ever lived | Full Episode

this is the realm of the most successful creature that has ever lived so is this [Music] and here it has been adapting evolving for 150 million years 14 000 species they are nearly everywhere thriving the ant [Music] this is the story of solenopsis Invicta for 80 years it has been on a ceaseless march across the United States racking up six billion dollars every year in crop damage equipment repair and Pest Control conquering 340 million acres in 13 states and it's still on the Move globally now scientists are cracking their ancient secrets to success and survival we knew that we could speculate all day but to fully understand the ants we decided to bring them into the lab and obtain visual data enlisting crime scene forensics to track the Invaders back to their Origins and breeding winged assassins to hunt them down one of the questions that I frequently get asked is what's going to happen when the Flies run out of fire ants to eat how could something so small be so destructive and create alien worlds with Collective behavior and form intelligence it is a super organism [Music] thank you there are 22 known species of fire ants this is perhaps the most feared even reviled of them all the red imported fire ant foreign it doesn't belong here in this South Georgia Lawn or even on this continent but it's here to stay [Music] the fire ant is native to the floodplains and savannas of South America sometime in the 1930s they hitched a ride on a cargo ship and were dumped in an Alabama port Invicta had found the land of great opportunity a fire ants Paradise we have been there scornful yet benevolent neighbors ever since [Music] a mature Colony can hold a quarter of a million fire ants their Mounds can reach 18 inches high and are often identified by a freshly tilled look inside an elaborate system of tunnels and Chambers extends down into the ground like ants the world over these insects are highly efficient Earth movers and clever architects climate control and safety are Paramount ants don't have the internal ability to regulate their body temperature like we can but they can build and they can mobilize [Music] on cool mornings workers bring the entire Colony Queen eggs and larva up into the sun warmed Mound In the Heat of the day the ants methodically Retreat back down into cooler ground [Music] we instinctively seek Shelter From The Storm the fire ant does just the opposite when rain saturates the soil their home becomes a death trap if they don't evacuate they will all drown but it's not every man for himself the queen and helpless brood must be protected [Music] to us this scramble looks like chaos it's not it's organized chaos [Music] every ant has a job and if ants had a motto it would probably be girl power the Ant World is run and ruled by females [Music] each is an Exquisite work of art the colony is almost entirely made up of the workers all sterile females a worker begins her career as handmaiden to the queen and nurse to The Brood feeding and cleaning her highness and Offspring is a full-time job as they get older workers are promoted to sanitation excavation foraging for food and defense of the colony these large wing dance are future Queens and the colonies only males their only job is to wait for Nature's call to emerge from the nest for their nuptial flight to mate when the brief honeymoon is over the males soon die off their job is done the future Queens fly off with a lifetime supply of sperm and establish a new colony a new Queen will only fly a few hundred feet or a few miles to her new home she can live for eight years and lay hundreds of eggs a day what began as a local infestation in a port city spread to 530 000 square miles [Music] the fire ant has confounded all efforts to eradicate it or even slow it down [Music] at one time experts thought the ants could not reproduce where the average temperature was 10 degrees Fahrenheit surely winter weather would provide a firewall they were wrong fire ants can survive winters of zero degrees Fahrenheit by hunkering down deep in their nest and expanding their potential range to a quarter of the continental United States the fire ant would seem Unstoppable the oldest and largest workers are key to the ant's survival they are the scouts and foragers it is their job to find food lots of it and bring it back to the Colony how do you feed a city of a quarter million it would take a huge Workforce and Rock Solid Logistics the fire ants specialty tunnels radiate out from the mound like Subway Lines as far as 100 feet on a human scale this transportation system would Traverse a hundred thousand miles [Music] there's an exit every foot or so for foraging ants to pop out or look around inside the tunnel recruits wait for the call to action to help gather dinner [Music] like us the fire ants are omnivores both plant and meat eaters they're always on the lookout for sugars or carbohydrates and proteins they aren't picky eaters a potato chip is a gourmet meal for these oil loving feeders fire ants also have a sweet tooth sugar water is an ideal mix of hydration and energy [Music] sugars power the workers and if it's around they'll find it when a scout finds food she leaves a chemical trail for others to follow these workers will drink their fill and regurgitate it back in the colony to ensure all are fed fire ants are opportunity feeders they'll take food wherever they can get it when food is scarce they'll even hack off the seedlings of new crops for a meal and if potatoes or peanuts get in the way of tunneling Invicta is glad to eat its way through every year fire ants cost farmers in the United States 750 million dollars in losses by ravaging seated Fields damaging irrigation and injuring livestock The Colony also needs protein especially for the growing brood they'll eat any living thing they can take down this ant is as voracious as it is fearless [Music] anything that can't fly or run away is likely doomed [Music] fire ants don't just bite they sting [Music] first the ant sinks its mandibles into the prey's flesh anchoring its body in place then it stabs the victim with a hypodermic-like stinger and injects Venom it stings over and over and over again [Music] a cricket's exoskeleton is tough but it's mouth joints and abdomen are soft targets even the humble roly-polies built-in armor can't hold the ants off forever the neuromuscular poison quickly overwhelms small prey [Music] Venom is highly unusual in the Ant World it's not just an efficient killer of other insects Queens apply it to their eggs to kill bacteria and fungus from the surrounding soil workers will even fling droplets of Venom at ants from competing colonies to drive them off or kill them this battle-tested male anole may think he's earned the right to nap where he pleases but there is no Safe Haven in fire ant territory [Music] junior members of the community will have to keep watch [Music] everything everywhere everyone will be explored in the Relentless search for food [Music] armed and dangerous Invicta is more than willing to test the medal of a predator one thousand times its size [Music] it looks like Sleeping Beauty has awakened and he doesn't like being bitten on the toe he won that battle but he dare not go to war with her sisters reptiles that stand their ground are promptly removed from the gene pool [Music] please even large mammals are at risk fire ants have been documented killing newborn calves deer fonts that instinctively freeze when sensing a threat can quickly find their nose throat and lungs clogged with fire ants Invicta saves its most merciless attack for anything that dares threaten The Colony prod amount and workers boil out in a mad rush the superorganism is like a weapon with a hair trigger these tiny Warriors can pose a serious threat even to us every year as many as 25 000 people are treated for attacks in the United States hundreds are hospitalized there have been at least 80 documented human deaths from fire ant stings most are attributed to victims going into anaphylactic shock from severe allergic reactions to the Venom as the fire ants territory continues to expand those numbers will only grow this ancient ancestor of the WASP seems to have a plan to handle just about anything we or nature can throw at it a good storm can ruin our day and even threaten our homes the fire ant is prepared for that too this time the water isn't going to stop a flood is coming [Music] [Music] once again the fire ants super organism Instinct kick into gear workers quickly open up dozens of new exits and Evacuate the Young Scouts scrambled to find Higher Ground or an escape route from the rising water okay the search is a dead end [Music] but the ants aren't finished in minutes The Colony assembles into a raft Queen and non-swimmers are carefully rounded up they'll be covered with a protective layer of workers they will not be left vulnerable to the scorching sun or predators [Music] you are witnessing one of Nature's Ancient Wonders this is how the tiny fire ant has survived the yearly epic flooding of its South American Homeland it is the only insect known to do this [Music] the raft can float along for months until the water recedes or it hits dry land foreign [Music] The Colony disentangles disembarks and sends Scouts in search of a new home [Music] a knot hole will do for now just who chooses the new home and how is still a mystery [Music] the precious little ones are whisked away to safety [Music] rafting has kept solenopsis Invicta alive for eons biologists could only guess at how they do it until now the ways in which fire ants work together and cooperate as a colony is unlike anything that we as humans are able to replicate today but I believe that through studying the fire ants they have a lot to teach us in the areas of engineering Material Science and even robotics a mechanical engineering student at the Georgia Institute of Technology analyzes The Cooperative behavior of fire ants Malott and Professor David who decided to put Invicta through a series of experiments to tease out the secrets to their abilities fire and rafting had already been well documented but not very well explained we knew that we could speculate all day but to fully understand the ants we decided to bring them into the lab and obtain visual data they came at the Red Menace as engineers and discovered an entirely new way of looking at the insect you start recording a fire ant colony can respond to threats or challenges by acting like a textile a liquid or a building material a single ants exoskeleton is partially wetting this is why when you put a single ant on the water it will flounder but when you put 100 or even a thousand ants onto the water they link their bodies together forming a floating raft if you look closely at the bottom of the raft you'll see that the ants linked together and form a stable base for the rest of the colony to rest upon the ants aren't simply floating with all of that weight on a small area the raft should sink but it doesn't the researchers wanted a closer look they needed to create a snapshot of the event but fire ants won't sit for a family portrait a little liquid nitrogen at 320 degrees below zero does the trick the Frozen ant raft is then put through a micro CT or CAT scan it's the same basic technology used in hospitals to look inside our bodies [Music] when you freeze ants in time and then examine the raft you find there are actually very few holes instead each ant is connected to an average eight of its neighbors using mandibles and the ends of its legs and this makes for a very strong condense Network when threatened with drowning the fire ant super organism instinctively weaves itself into a kind of waterproof fabric by linking closely together the ants create a rough surface that magnifies their water repellency the raft is far more buoyant than the sum of its living parts when you push down on this raft you see that it actually flexes and stretches like a fabric if you push further trying to submerge the raft you find this raft turns into a watertight ball and the submerged sphere the surf attention of the water keeps the water out and the ants inside alive this surface tension continues to keep the water out up until about eight inches of depth in human terms that's nearly 400 feet under water the researchers were just getting started they noticed that the ants seemed to sense how many passengers were aboard as ants are removed one by one those on the bottom move up without any Central Command or captain of the ship the super organism keeps the raft at a consistent optimal thickness the fact that the ants always build the same shaped wrath is an example of what we call swarm intelligence we believe that this Collective Behavior can be applied to robotics basically it's much easier to build a small robot following simple local rules than to build a complex robot that will change shape and perform complex behaviors when spun in a beaker the ants instinctively gather into a tight sphere there are disturbing Legends of researchers long past who'd engaged in ant-ball fights melaton who weren't about to try that but it did align with their observations [Music] when you handle ants they feel like chewing gum you can pull them apart stretch them and with enough Force you can break them the ants themselves have a very high strength so potentially they would have enough Force to break off each other's limbs but they don't next up the microscopic strength test when sticking to a rough surface ants can't support as much as 5700 times their body weight that could be lethal to rafting on rough water but when sticking to each other the fire ant grips its neighbor with only 400 times its body weight the fire ant seemed to know the physical limitations of their bodies they carefully modulate the force of their grip so that when they're outside forces such as wind gravity or waves they release each other before ripping off each other's legs researchers noticed other peculiar behaviors the superorganism could also act like a liquid the ants inside this funnel are being pulled downward by gravity but they don't free fall like grains of sand in an hourglass their controlled grip on neighbors allows the colony to flow like a thick fluid gently touching down on the surface below each fire ant is hardwired with seemingly simple commands that allow the colony to navigate complex Terrain just as a fluid sticks to objects at the surface and flows across gaps the firemen Colony controls its descent when clumps of ants fall they land like sticky drops dispersing the energy of the fall but keeping the colony together the fire ants legendary strength is in its numbers and its Collective Behavior there are already other roboticists able to build small robots that follow simple rules and can link up with other robots to perform complex Cooperative behaviors imagine we have a sewer drain where we can drop simple and like robots down the drain and these ant-like robots will live together at the bottom of the sewer building a larger robot that can perform human tasks such as inspection and repair by studying the behavior of fire ants we can learn a basic blueprint for how such robots need to coordinate and behave for social creatures communication is critical it allows us to share information to seek help warn others of danger organize communication is power we use sounds words language a fire ant uses chemicals called pheromones the foundation of their society when a foraging ant finds food too large to take back to the Colony She lays down a trail with her stinger the better the food the stronger the trail [Music] the ants antenna serve as its nose detecting the chemical message by releasing different amounts and different types of pheromones the ants spread the word that dinner is this way it's time to move the colony or attack the intruder [Music] the chemicals also tell the colony who's the queen when her babies need help when it's time to mate perhaps 20 different messages in all the fire ants antennae are so sensitive one teaspoon of recruitment pheromone is enough to create an ant Trail 120 million miles long that's 5 000 times around the Earth like many insects fire ants have two compound eyes made up of dozens of lenses they lack the resolution of a single lens eye such as ours but they have a far larger viewing angle and are excellent for detecting motion the ant has three more eyes on top of its head for navigation fire ants Orient themselves by the sun if you replace the sun with a revolving light in a laboratory ants wander around aimlessly never laying down a trail to the food the fire ant doesn't just enjoy our ham sandwiches they have a taste for modern conveniences traffic lights are a popular destination the ants are attracted to electrical Fields chew on wiring and get electrocuted for their trouble fried ants give off alarm pheromones fatally attracting more ants [Applause] their electrical repair Bill runs into the tens of millions every year with burned out well pump switches Airport runway lights and electrical outlets in Texas air conditioning technicians have reported that one-third of summertime repairs are due to fire ants shorting out electrical components unraveling fire ant behaviors can take Decades of research [Music] it also requires a technique known to Craftsmen as far back as 3200 BC it works just as well today [Music] but instead of creating plowshares swords or art for the king it will reveal the invisible Empire of the fire ant small hole is made in the center of the mound carefully exposing some larger tunnels down into the nest several pounds of molten wax are carefully poured into the hole the liquid quickly flows to the farthest reaches instantly and tuming the occupants [Music] in the fire ant business talcum powder is like Kryptonite it clogs up and dries out the tiny hairs on an ant's feet if they can't climb you they can't sting you The Nest is dug from the ground it will take hours of painstaking work to clean the way the dirt and roots [Music] to us this may look like little more than Tangled string an alien puzzle it is a masterpiece of civil engineering the spiraling tunnels interconnect Chambers used to store eggs raise young rest processed food it is a home a fortress a nursery a highway system the building plans are encoded in the fire ants varied DNA where they go it goes the global invasion is well underway we provide the machines and a free ticket to ride traveling in wooden pallets Nursery Stock lumber used Earth moving equipment nearly anything a single newly mated Queen can establish a beachhead in Virgin Territory fire ants have been found in the Caribbean New Zealand Australia Taiwan China Macau at least 11 countries no one knows the full potential range of Invicta but studies of climate and water availability indicate that as much as 50 percent of the earth's surface is habitable by the ants foreign [Music] accounts of all of us the farmers Housewives Sportsmen and scientists like myself we are all deeply concerned with the imported fire ant problem the United States government waged two all-out Wars on the fire ant from 1957 to 1975. don't think to pass just limits itself to Wildlife and agriculture construction ganks and utility Crews have tried various ways to avoid them trouble is fire ants can read fueled by a powerful mix of politics and public Hysteria now don't get the idea that our homes are safe from attack for the fire ant I Betty more than 400 million pounds of poisoned bait was spread over millions of Acres provided all people cooperate there will be no damage when the airplanes or ground equipment go to work no damage that is except to the fire ant the results were disastrous [Music] the poisons were indiscriminate killing honeybees Birds cattle marine life fire ants all ants worse yet with all competitors wiped out of an area the prolific fire ant soon moved back in and dominated by the time the eradication campaigns ended in 1975. Invicta had more than doubled its territory The Staggering amounts of poison had only strengthened the fire ants iron grip on the United States as Invicta began invading other countries the question became where are they coming from the United States or South America or could the ants be jumping from country to country with global trade goods knowing the ant's travel route could help authorities stop or at least slow their March into new territory the answer was locked away inside the ants themselves DrDuane Shoemaker was determined to rest it from them one ant at a time Shoemaker and his team gathered ants from the newly invaded territories ground them up and extracted their DNA specific markers in the ants genes would identify which colonies which Queens had produced the fire ants turning up overseas [Music] the results were clear these are the same types of markers that are used for paternity analyzes and crime scene forensic analyzes in humans [Music] and our results consistently and unambiguously indicated that the U.

S is the immediate source population of fire ants found in all introduced areas including China Taiwan and Australia but Shoemaker didn't stop there he compared the findings to genetic samples from more than 2 000 colonies in 75 sites worldwide and what they told him surprised nearly everyone fire Ant Invasion hadn't started in Brazil as most biologists thought the genetic Trail LED back to the floodplains of Argentina he sampled a large number of fire ant mounds from different areas in South America and our results clearly showed that there have been at least two introductions of fire ants into the U. S both of which come from an area in northeastern Argentina this area lies along the Paraguay River which represents a possible route of introduction of fire ants into the U. S on cargo agricultural Goods perhaps wood or ship ballast from the Paraguay River into the ocean then to the U.