Ant ATTACKS Black Widow to Avenge its Colony

This colony of desert harvester ants has a problem. Their once peaceful kingdom has been taken over by a cruel tyrant, who's been picking them off one by one. Perched above their nest is the tangled lair of a young black widow, who surrounded the area with webs and built herself a non-stop conveyor belt of food. Many lives have already been lost, and the colony needs to find a way to put an end to her reign. Luckily, a lone ant will soon step up to the challenge and attempt the impossible. But this is no small task. Widows are some of the most effective ant predators on earth. When one becomes trapped in her web, others come to free it, and end up entangled themselves. This leaves the widow with massive conglomerates of ants, which she feeds on one at a time like a kid tearing into a loaf of pull-apart bread. The bright colors on her abdomen show that she's only about halfway to adulthood, and eating these harvester ants isn't a phase this teenager's growing out of anytime soon. The colony needs to stop her now before she gets even larger and more formidable. The problem is, desert harvester ants aren't built for attack. They're simple scavengers who comb the desert looking for seeds and dead insects to bring back to their colony. And unlike other harvester ant species, they can't even sting. The black widow, on the other hand, has the most potent venom of any spider in the country, and just a single bite would mean instant death. But that doesn't stop one ant from rising to the occasion to see if it can be the hero the colony needs. The lone worker climbs to the top of the shrub, the equivalent of a human climbing up a skyscraper to face the widow head on. The spider appears completely unbothered. After all, her web is a near perfect defense. She's the only one who knows which strands are safe to step on, so the ant has no way of getting to her. But luckily, it doesn't need to. Desert harvester ants might not be able to sting, but they make up for it with incredibly strong jaws. The black widow's silk is proportionally stronger than steel, but it doesn't hold up to the ant's built-in wire cutters. Now that got her attention. The ant meticulously starts snipping her anchor lines, and little by little, the black widow's impenetrable lair comes crumbling down. The widow is in dire straits. If her web is completely snipped, she'll fall into the nest. Sure she'd be able to kill a few, but she stands no chance against a colony of a thousand unhappy ants. So she does something incredible. She cuts the webs attaching her collection of ants, and drops them to the colony below. The ants receive them, and check on the status of their comrades. Every last one is dead. The attacking ant continues snipping the web, and the spider starts showing its nerves. She waves her legs, looking for another strand to hold onto before she falls. But after an intense stare-down, the ant backs off and climbs down the shrub. It meets the others surrounding the pile of corpses, and for a time, they'd stand at their side, observing them, doing nothing. Was the ant's whole mission not to kill the widow, but instead bring back the bodies of its comrades? It definitely could have finished the job, or at least recruited more ants to help. But instead, its priorities seem to be here, with the dead. After a period of inactivity, they start to entangle the corpses from the webs. Again, the webs of a black widow have a higher tensile strength than steel of the same weight. But that doesn't stop this ant from using all its might to pull the bodies free and snap the strands. Each ant is separated and carried into the desert, to be laid to rest far out of sight from the colony. This is another behavior that's starting to seem oddly human, but it does have a scientific reason. When an ant is dead for a couple of days, they start to release a chemical called oleic acid, which is a signal to the other ants that it needs to be moved away from the colony and placed into a designated graveyard of sorts. This keeps the nest clean and stops the spread of disease. Could the smell of oleic acid coming from the bodies in the web have been so strong that the ants felt they needed to move them farther away, regardless of the danger? Or is there possibly a deeper, more emotional reason for all this? And what really has me stumped, is how did the black widow know that giving the bodies back to the ants would stop the attack? There's so much we don't understand about the natural world, and I'd love to hear what you guys think happened here. The ants have gotten what they were after, but the widow's web is in tatters, and she can't do much to repair it while the colony is awake. Under the cover of nightfall, she'll choose to either rebuild her trap or find a new place to set up shop. But for now, she'll bide her time and feast on her private stash while deciding her next move. Ants are such an overwhelming force in the insect world that I always find it fascinating when other bugs discover a way to overpower them. If you want to see some other ant hunters in action, check out my video on the ant mimic jumping spider, and how it infiltrates enemy lines. Or how the antlion has found a way to beat any species of ant on earth at the bottom of its pit. And I'll see you guys next time.