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Witness one of natures ancient wonders - Fire Ants!
It has been adapting, evolving for 150 million years 14 000 species they are nearly everywhere thriving.
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.
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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 cr
eate
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 Alaba
ma 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 th
ey 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 ne
w 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 survi
ve 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 o
ut 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 fo
r 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 jus
t 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 n
ot 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 Rele
ntless 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 f
rom 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 witnessi
ng 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 s
afety [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 r
espond 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
floatin
g 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 actuall
y 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
i
t 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 aboar
d 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 c
omplex
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 oth
er'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 e
ach 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 whe
re 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 langu
age 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 tel
l 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 moti
on 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 pheromone
s 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 to
day [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 fee
t 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 go
es 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 an
d 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 h
elp authorities stop or at least slow their March into new
territory the answer was locked away inside the ants themselves Dr Duane 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 t
hat 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 fr
om the Paraguay River into
the ocean then to the U.S exactly where the invasion had originated 80 years ago was becoming
important history had shown that eradication was extremely difficult and Rife with unseen
consequences [Music] Dr Sanford Porter had long since decided it was time to put down
the hammer and look for a new tool [Music] he found it eagerly waiting back with a story
of solenopsis Invicta began and it had long been perfected by Nature this tool was custom
made to kill fire ants a
nd it's no bigger than the head of a pin these forward flies
specifically Target fire ants and the reason they do that is because they seek after the
smell of the fire ant they need an ant is the right size and and they have to look like
fire ants they only will attack fire ants and only fire ants that come from South America
even fire ants that are native here in the United States are not suitable hosts for the
flies that we're bringing up from South America Porter and his colleagues identified
five
forward flies that prey on the fire ant and nothing else [Music] these workers are toiling
away in a high-tech fly Factory here at the usda's animal and plant inspection service
in Florida the concept is simple and ingenious the ants have nowhere to hide their brood
but the cup on the tray but every 10 minutes they're forced to relocate the babies they
are always on the move and always vulnerable to the attackers hovering above them where humans carpet bombed the fire ant with
poison the f
orward fly prefers a surgical strike literally the Flies are drawn to ant
mounds by their pheromones the ants sense the danger and release more pheromones Gathering
more flies it's as if the ants are calling in an airstrike on their own colony if fire
ants have nightmares they look like this the business end of a forward fly these male flies hovering above the ants are
waiting for the females to arrive in forward flies patience is not a virtue
they only live for a few days so everything happens
fast very fast they mate in the blink
of an eye and so the females will be following around tracking the fire ant the males meanwhile
will be tracking the females and if they can find the female they'll grab the female out
of the air they'll mate in the air and as they fall to the ground they need to complete
the mating and then break apart because if they're a slow at it the fire ants will catch
them and eat them [Music] we have several dozen species of these
flies but each of these species of
flies has an overpositor that fits into the some part
of the ant like a lock and a key and in each of these ovipositors when the
fly flies in she'll latch onto the fire ant in just the right spot in a fraction of a
second she injects the egg into the body of the amp and then flies away There Is No Escape
she strikes with Incredible speed and precision injecting an egg into the ant's body [Music]
it is a death sentence [Music] in days the egg hatches and a microscopic
maggot crawls up into the an
t's head Mr ants suspect nothing until the maggot releases
an enzyme decapitating its host the maggot then eats the dead ants brains muscle tissues
bodily fluids and all increasing 100 times in size soon a new forward fly emerges and
the cycle starts again 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 and and what I
can tell you is is that they'll simply die every year technicians Harvest 3 million fire
ant heads and their t
iny tenants for shipment across the United States Mass breeding program has successfully established
forward flies in 11 states a growing Air Force with a singular Mission kill fire ants and
make more flies the Ford flies alone are not going to solve our fire ant problem when we
go down to South America what we find is that fire ant populations there are about one-fifth
to one-tenth of what they are here in the United States and we think that that's because
of escape from natural enemies so our
goal is to bring up enough of the right kind of
natural enemies in safe natural enemies that we can tilt the ecological balance in favor
of the Native amps here microbial spores viruses and parasitic ants
have been keeping them in check for millennia who study fire ants will readily admit that
the definitive book on invicta's Survival control and management was written by Mother
Nature long ago every breakthrough in research is yet another Glimpse at another page some say the fire ants story isn
't all that
different from ours they are highly social and cherish their young they communicate and organize on a massive
scale we are highly intelligent but they can do
this seemingly impossible we build great cities they build great Empires
fire ants are late comers to Global invasion but they have never been defeated it has also
been said that if Humanity destroys itself in a nuclear war cockroaches will inherit
the earth probably not [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music]
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