The Largest Civilization in The World

Imagine a civilization that outnumbers humanity by six orders of magnitude, by one and a half million times. And it's not some bacteria. These creatures have created a fully functional social order. They have a clear hierarchy, professions and career ladders. They're long past the hunting and gathering stage and have successfully transitioned to agriculture and animal husbandry. They teach the youth, take care of the elderly and the disabled and bury their dead. They can even reproduce by cloning. They've easily outlived every single species that prevailed on their planet in the last hundred million years. But at the same time, a simple infection can turn them into real zombies. Does it seem like some post-apocalyptic science fiction to you? And yet, it's not. It's all about ants. In this video, you'll find out how many ants there are on Earth, how much they weigh, when they emerge, how they live, how they practice agriculture, why their society resembles human civilization, and much more that will surprise and even shock you. Ants. We've all seen ants and may have a vague idea of how many ants there are on the planet. But few people are even approximately close in their estimation because the real numbers are somewhat mind-blowing. Today, there are 14,218 species of ants alone. And this is not considering the additional 1,758 subspecies. Nobody really knows the total number of these creatures. Most commonly, the ant population is estimated to be at about 10 quadrillions. That is, 10,000 trillion individuals. Yes, I know, it's hard to wrap your head around this figure. In total, this giant biomass weighs approximately tens of billions of kilograms. What's interesting is that this figure exceeds the total weight of humanity as far back as 2,000 years ago. Ants inhabit all corners of the planet and all continents except Antarctica. They emerged about 110 to 130 million years ago, probably in the Laurasia supercontinent. Historically, they come from ancient wasps. But scientists haven't yet identified any specific wasp species as their ancestors. And despite ants' close resemblance to termites, the two shouldn't be confused. Termites aren't even related to them and are closer to cockroaches based on their family tree. Ants can vary in size by an order of magnitude. The smallest is about two millimeters long, and the largest species can reach several centimeters. The largest fossil ants in history belong to the genus Formicium. Their females reach seven centimeters long, with a wingspan of up to 15 centimeters. Yes, ants have wings, and we aren't talking about different species. In general, all ants belong to the Hymenoptera order, which might give it away, as terra means a wing in Latin. But for the most part, only females and males have wings, and worker ants are wingless. Hold on, what? Does it mean that workers are neither females nor males? That's not a mistake, as we deliberately distinguish between worker ants, males, and females. In fact, worker ants are technically females, but they have an underdeveloped reproductive system, which effectively renders them asexual. How do they reproduce, then? Well, they don't. In the ant community, reproduction is a privilege, an honor, and a great responsibility. Having this privilege doesn't have to do with being the fittest or strongest one, but comes by birth. Being a highly diverse species, ants have many reproductive strategies. The most common one is the usual mating of a male with a female, but this seems ordinary only at first glance. In fact, ant reproduction is filled with such a powerful mix of drama, romance, and grotesque that people never dreamed of. It all starts with a nuptial flight. This is a special time for insects when new colonies appear at all planet latitudes where comes the spring. Winged females and males leave the nest to mate and form new families. This is the only time in the life of ants when they use their wings for their intended purpose. Ant wings are clumsy and function poorly. Females often climb high plant stems and use them as a launching pad to start their flight. Males are more agile and often take off directly from the ground. Mating itself happens in the air, right in mid-flight. Yes, nature is sometimes that romantic, but that's where the romance ends. After mating, the male no longer has any life purpose and soon dies. What does the female do? She flies away from her former home. Upon landing, it immediately bites off its own wings. What for? Because she doesn't need them anymore. The female is fertilized only once in her life. There will never be a second flight, ever. The future queen begins to look for a place to form a new colony. The genetic material left by the male is enough for the female to lay fertilized eggs throughout her life. And queens live for a very long time, up to 12 to 20 years depending on the species. Simple worker ants live no more than five years. However, it's worth noting that such breeding patterns are typical for most ant species, but not all. In some species, workers can also mate and produce offspring. And in some species, hit the other extreme and reproduce by cloning. No, no laboratories or test tubes, but the idea is somewhat similar. For example, ant species called Mycosoporus smithii reproduces by parthenogenesis. In this type of reproduction, females emerge from unfertilized eggs. And these are not some extra eggs that the males didn't have time to get to. The thing is that there is no one to fertilize them. There are simply no males. In the process of evolution, the species deem them to be non-essential. When colonies of Mycosoporus smithii were discovered in the Amazon basin, scientists were amazed at this turn of natural evolution. All individuals in the discovered colony were females, and all of them were exact copies of the same queen, and naturally each other. The data was published in a report by the research team in Proceedings of the Royal Society. The researchers admitted that they stumbled upon this amazing fact by accident. They noticed that the males were missing while studying other aspects of this species life. Not being able to identify males in the nest based on external signs, scientists conducted a DNA analysis of the individuals they collected. They found that all of them were indeed females, and that they were all queen clones. After that, scientists found that the most important reproductive organ in a queen, the copulatory bag, has completely lost its function. However, several years later, large-scale research revealed that individual populations of this species didn't completely lose sexual reproduction. But this doesn't change anything, since 90% of all selected individuals in all of South and Central America turned out to be clones, coming from different queens, but still clones. And this means that Mycoceparus smithii finally choose its reproduction method. But it can be a tragic mistake, because this reproduction method can't provide sufficient diversity. The species becomes extremely vulnerable to external threats and may face rapid extinction. However, the disappearance of one species doesn't affect the stability of the ant kingdom as a whole. These guys easily outlive the dinosaurs, so they're unlikely to be seriously endangered. And given how ant society works, it's time to think that these guys may well build some kind of alternative civilization. In terms of social structure, ants are the closest to humans on earth. Each new discovery in myrmecology, the science of ants, proves this once and again. The ant hill has a strict hierarchy and distribution of roles. The nest is managed by the queen, the founder of the colony, who lays eggs. The queen is surrounded by a retinue of 10 to 12 worker ants, who serve her by feeding and taking care of her in every possible way. As a rule, mostly young ants do this. This is literally a kind of social practice that all nest inhabitants go through for about a month. The task of such trainees is to take care of the queen, eggs, or larvae. Mature individuals go to the farthest part of the ant hill patrolling area, where they engage in foraging. The ant brings the food it has found to the authorities, who decide how it gets distributed throughout the ant hill. In addition to food, the ant hill is also fed with a special pheromone, an odorous substance secreted by the queen. It contains information about her health. Ants from the retinue lick this substance from the queen, carry it in a special goiter, and pass it on to each other one by one. Thus, all individuals of the ant society are connected to one information space, a small-town social network of ants, if you will. What's interesting about ants' life is how they bring up their offspring. Ants can learn interactively, that is, acquire knowledge based on someone else's experience rather than their own mistakes. This is generally something extraordinary for insects. The most experienced and tough forager hunter is the first to attack the prey. It shows the young its skills on how to attack, sting, and kill. That's how it teaches the younger generation hunting skills. But in order to learn successfully, one needs to have a good memory. And the ants can't complain. Active foragers who look for food on their own can perfectly know their hunting area and remember how to get home. If the ant path is blocked by an intricate labyrinth, the foragers will eventually find a passage after wandering through some nooks and crannies. And then they remember the labyrinth path for at least four days, even if they have to stay put due to bad weather during this time. Ants have a good sense of time and effectively use it. If a feeder is placed strictly at a certain time near the ant path, the foragers will quickly remember the time when the food appears and will gather at this site just in time. If the feeding stops, the ants will still come to this place for another five days at the very same time. Phytol ants are very well organized. At the first warning signal, they only prepare the family property for moving. They bring the larvae and pupae to the exit and only a small part to the surface. As if hoping for a false alarm, the ants don't actually start fleeing until the danger is confirmed. Given such a complex interaction, how do thousands of ants manage to communicate effectively? How do they know where to go, what to do, and how do they remember all this data? In fact, they don't have to remember anything and their communication methods are much richer than they seem. Ants don't have ears as humans do. They hear by measuring vibrations. Special knee and leg sensors help them pick up the vibrations around. Some ants make sounds by stridulation, a characteristic chirping produced with the stomach and jaw segments. Sounds can be used to communicate with the colony members or even with other species. But perhaps the main communication method is the smell. Ants leave pheromone traces on the soil surface, which are easily picked up by other individuals. In species that feed in groups, the foraging ants mark the trail on its way back to the colony after finding something tasty. Other ants follow this trail and reinforce it with their pheromones when they go back to the colony with food. When the food source runs out, the returning ants leave no new trails and the smell slowly dissipates. This behavior helps the ants cope with environmental changes. For example, when an established path to a food source is blocked by an obstacle, foragers leave that path to explore new routes. If successful, the ant leaves a new trail indicating the shortest path on its return. Successful trails are followed by more ants who reinforce the best routes. This is how ants form their famous trails. Ants use pheromones for more than just trails. A squashed ant emits an alarm pheromone that drives nearby ants into an attack frenzy and attracts ants from afar. Some ant species even use misleading pheromones to confuse enemy ants and cause them to attack each other. Pheromones are produced by many structures in the ants' bodies. Dufour's glands, venom glands, as well as the glands in the hindgut, coccyx, rectum, sternum, and hind leg are all used for pheromone communication. Ants also exchange pheromones with each other, mixing them with food, thereby transmitting information within the colony. This allows other ants to determine which task group other family members belong to. Also, some ant types have more than one queen in the colony, but a whole cast of queens. And when the dominant queen stops producing a specific pheromone, it signals a change in power. The workers begin to take care of another queen, who becomes the dominant one. The variety of communication modes combined with tiny but extremely rational brains give ants an amazing advantage in building a civilization-like society. Being infinitely far from higher mammals, and especially people, ants nonetheless turn out to be capable of agriculture and animal breeding, in the most real sense of the word. Most ants are generic predators, scavengers, and herbivores. Many herbivorous ant species rely on a unique symbiosis with their own gut microbes to enhance the nutritional value of the plant food they harvest. But many ant species have achieved some remarkable results by following the path that was once chosen by humans. Specifically, ants have developed their own brand of agriculture. This practice has spread so widely that ant farming can now be clearly classified. The most primitive, lower agriculture, was mastered by 80 ant species. 34 species of ants grow coral mushrooms for their needs. And 18 species practice yeast breeding. Finally, 63 ant species have mastered higher agriculture. They learn to grow mushrooms and create entire mushroom gardens. What's even more surprising, some special mushroom varieties have emerged that were literally domesticated by generations of ants. These mushrooms can no longer survive in the wild, but only at ant farms, under the watchful care of these amazing creatures. A colony of leaf-cutting ants represents a good example of such agriculture. They arrange entire mushroom plantations and use finely chopped leaves as a substrate. Yes, you heard that right. The ants bring the leaves to the colony and cut them into small pieces to use as fertilizer. And even in agriculture, ants retain a clear specialization and a set of professions. Basically, an ant's job depends on the size of the individual. The larger workers cut the stems, smaller individuals gnaw the leaves into pieces, and the smallest tend to the plantation. They even protect mushrooms from harmful bacteria. The bacteria that produce substances that act as an antibiotic against other bacteria that are dangerous to fungi live on the outer surface of the ant's body. Leaf-cutter ants are sensitive enough to recognize the fungus's reaction to various plant materials by picking up mushrooms' chemical signals. If a certain type of leaf is found to be toxic to fungi, the colony will remember it and won't pick it again. Such a high level of self-organization of ant communities can shock almost anyone. As if this wasn't enough, the ants went one step further. How do you like the fact that ants have also managed to master animal husbandry? Part of being active and formidable predators, especially considering their size, ants have learned to keep livestock. But instead of cattle, they breed aphids, who secrete special nectar called honeydew, which is a valuable high-energy food. Ants graze aphids on nearby plants and take care of them, protecting them from other predators. They learn not only to collect the nectar secreted by aphids, but also to literally milk these tiny insects. To milk an aphid, the ant tickles its abdomen with its antennae, and the aphid obediently releases excess nectar at the ant's first request. Interestingly, this doesn't even come close to parasitism, since without ants' care, aphids die much sooner from other predators. When migrating to another area, many ant colonies take aphid herds with them. The parallels with our animal farming are quite obvious here. Looking at all these achievements, one might think that ants represent some kind of flawless life form. They have an invincible, incredibly precise, and rational collective consciousness. However, their way of life only seems to be flawless at first sight, as it has some major downsides. And when taken collectively, these downsides may sometimes lead to a full-blown tragedy. Look at this. What's this? Are the ants celebrating something? Wedding? Or perhaps a ritual dance? No, this is the so-called death circle. Almost all of these ants will soon die. They will continuously spin in this deadly circle to the point of complete exhaustion. But what for? And why? In reality, this phenomenon occurs due to a system error. Remember, we've mentioned how well pheromone trail marking works for ants. But even though it developed through millions of years of evolution, this system might play a cruel joke on ants. If a group of ants make several turns in the same direction along the route, it may stumble upon its own odor trail, left just a minute ago. After walking along the path, the insect makes the same turns again, going back to the same point. And the cycle repeats over and over again. The most annoying thing is that when following their own footsteps many times, the ants keep on secreting pheromones. In doing so, they reinforce this vicious circle and their own confidence that they're going in the right direction. These cheerful and unsuspecting ants are joined by their friends, who have absolutely no idea as to what caused this massive procession. The result of this march is easily predictable. Thousands of individuals die from exhaustion in this deadly dance. Only an accidental external intervention can save them. The largest death circle was observed by the U.S. traveler William Beebe in 1921 in Diana. He claimed that Isetan ants created a 365-meter-wide circle, and their self-destructive march lasted two days. By the way, such whirlwinds aren't that rare, and almost all types of ants can be sucked into the death circle. Unfortunately, ants do this as a part of ingrained behavior patterns. Such accidents happen all the time, wherever there are several ant trails nearby. However, we simply walk by most of them, and often only a few individuals fall into the trap. On open and flat terrains, such circles may reach truly gigantic proportions. And it looks creepy. The ants behave like some kind of zombie. But did you know that ants can actually become zombies? No kidding! A typical zombie apocalypse scenario we see in movies is an infection that turns people into mindless creatures. But nature has a similar eerie scenario. This is Cordyceps lopsided. It seems to be a harmless fungus. But if ants had dreams, this fungus would surely be their worst nightmare. Being infected with the spores of this fungus is the most terrible thing that can happen to an ant. What's even worse, the parasite affects the victim's sense of smell, its main communication channel. As a result, the infected individual loses contact with its friends, strays far away, and doesn't get back to the colony. At this stage, the fungus already controls its behavior, looking for optimal conditions to fully mature. Eventually, the fungus causes the ant to find a cool, damp spot and bite down on the bottom of the leaf on the branch. Once the ant bites the leaf, it can no longer let it go, as the fungus blocks muscle function. The fungus keeps on growing inside the ant's body until it eventually pierces its head and releases new spores. This whole process takes about 10 painful days, and most of the time, the insect is alive. Bummer, isn't it? Science is long known of this phenomenon. But until now, scientists have been unable to understand exactly how the parasitic fungus can control the ant's mind. It has often been called a brain parasite, but a study from February 2021, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, disproves this theory. It turns out that the insect's brain remains intact, and the ant is being controlled by introducing the mycelium into the muscle fibers throughout the body. In fact, an affected ant becomes an exoskeleton and a means of fungus transportation, while ant tissue cells are partially replaced by fungi. That is, the ant effectively becomes one with the fungus. Like a real puppeteer, fungus pulls the strings, forcing the ant to perform this terrible scenario, having no chance to get rid of this zombie influence. Nonetheless, despite all their weaknesses, ants firmly occupy their niche in the Earth's biosphere. And the structure of their society, and how closely it resembles human civilization, is even a little shocking. Who knows what kind of civilization leap they might make in the future?