Science Vs - Ants: Tales from the Underground

Episode Date: December 5, 2019

On today’s show, three f-ant-astic stories of survival, friendship and courage about some of the most underrated creatures in the animal queendom. Produced with our friends at Every Little Thing, another Gimlet podcast. We spoke with behavioral ecologist Dr. István Maák, biologist Dr. Erik Frank, entomologist Dr. Christina Kwapich, and biologist Prof Derrick Brazill.  Check out the full transcript here: http://bit.ly/38cDgoU  Selected references:  István’s study on ants surviving in a nuclear bunker: http://bit.ly/2rkR2Fb  Erik’s study on ants helping each other in a termite hunt: http://bit.ly/2YlH6Y9  Christina’s study on ants destroying spider webs: http://bit.ly/2RnOMrt  Review on “dicty”- the amoeba we talk to Derrick about: http://bit.ly/2DQFoVk  Credits: Science Vs is produced by Wendy Zukerman along with Meryl Horn, Rose Rimler, Michelle Dang, and Lexi Krupp. Every Little Thing’s piece was produced by Gabby Bulgarelli, Emily Forman, Phoebe Flanigan, Annette Heist and Flora Lichtman. This episode was edited by Caitlin Kenney and Jorge Just. Fact checking by Diane Kelly and Nicole Pasulka. Mix and sound design by Peter Leonard and Dara Hirsch. Music written by Dara Hirsch, Dan Brunelle, Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, Bobby Lord and erm, Wendy. A big thanks to Dr. Nathalie Stroeymeyt, Dr. Gema Trigos-Peral, Dr. Jack Neff, and recording help from Wojciech Oleksiak And special thanks to the Zukerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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New episodes drop every other Thursday, starting February 1st. Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet. On today's show, we're doing something a little different. We're bringing you a couple of stories about one of the most underrated creatures in the animal queendom. You see, every time someone does a survey about people's favourite animals, you know who wins? Tigers. Dolphins.

Maybe gorillas. But you know who you don't see on these lists? Ants. Yeah, ants. But in the last few years, scientists have documented some rather unexpected and very cool behaviour in ants, and it's making us see these little creatures in a whole new light. So in this episode, we're going to tell you those stories.

They're stories of survival, heroism, and how on earth can an ant do that-ism? The first story comes from us here at Science Versus, and our second story comes from our friends at another Gimlet podcast called Every Little Thing. Then, to top it all off, we'll take you to a creature that's even more curious than an ant. So strap in as we crawl into the ant's nest. Our first story, cold ant wars. So just a few weeks ago, a scandalous paper was published.

It described the story of an ant colony that persevered through extreme conditions. And their incredible ability to survive took scientists by surprise. Hello? Hello. This is Isvan Mark. He works at the Museum and Institute of Zoology in Poland. And Isvan told us that his ant venture began when a colleague told him that he'd found something curious in an abandoned underground nuclear bunker

in the forests of Western Poland. They were living underground, so in a bunker, totally isolated. The only way into this bunker was through a little crack in the walls that you can squeeze through. His fan is a big guy, so he really had to squish. Yeah, so you have to crawl inside. What were you feeling the very first time that you crawled into that hole? I don't know.

It was a very strange feeling. I was really enthusiastic and interested to see what will follow. So I was curious, let's say that's the best word which describes the curiosity. He crawls through the one metre thick concrete and gets inside. It's pitch black. He's wearing a headlamp though, so he can see. It looks like an empty warehouse, paint peeling on the walls, water dripping. He walks down some hallways, deep into the building. And then he sees it. The ground is covered in ants. It's like, wow. It's a shock that, wow, that they are surviving there. The ants had gotten into the bunker through a series of rather unfortunate events. There is a huge colony of ants outside, just above the bunker.

Hundreds of thousands of worker ants with hundreds of queens. And they had picked the wrong real estate to build their home. It turns out the ants had built their colony over an open pipe that led into the nuclear bunker. The pipe was essentially a gaping hole in the middle of their colony and the ants kept falling through. It's almost constant. Someone fell in my on my head and on my hands. And once they fell in they couldn't get out. And if you were one of those workers who was who was trying to do your job and then you fell into the pipe.

What do you think you'd be thinking? Yeah, if I would be an ant, oh God, where am I? What am I doing here? I would go in a corner and die screaming. For us, it's a horrible setup, let's say. It's a horror, darkness. You will lose your mind. And ants don't lose their mind. Isfand had heard of these kinds of ants living in some pretty hostile situations. But

this was particularly grim. It's extremely cold down in the bunker and there was basically no food. Yet, the ants had persisted. They were still alive after being down there for possibly years. And they were building a nice little nest, even keeping it clean, by removing the bodies of their fallen comrades and putting them in nice little piles, which scientists call cemeteries. Yes, there are really, really many, many of them. Is it like a giant pile of dead ants? Several millions, I think, down there.

So, yeah, it's not a good vision. There was a mystery here, though. How were the ants surviving? Because there was basically nothing to eat down in the bunker. Some bat droppings, maybe a beetle or two that had dropped down the pipe. Well, the team found their answer when they took more than 150 dead ants back to the lab. They examined them carefully and found some of their legs had been eaten out and there were holes in their bellies.

They can easily chew out a hole where they can eat these soft organs and let's say flesh inside. And the flesh inside. Yeah. How many ants had been eaten like that? Around 90, more than 92% of them were eaten like that. Whoa! And the fact that the ants were making a meal out of their buddies

made headlines around the world. They've been stuck in this bunker for years with no light and no food. So how did they survive off each other? Worker ants trapped in a nuclear weapons bunker turned into cannibals. These are nuclear-powered cannibal ants and they're coming for us. But away from these tabloid headlines, what really struck Ishvan wasn't that the ants were eating their friends to survive. It was that they kept trying to make a nice nest. They were collecting dirt, building nice little tunnels, even though there

was no real hope. You see, the ants in the bunker are worker ants. Their whole job is to feed their queens and make the colony nice for their babies. But down here, in the bunker, there weren't any queens. No babies to feed. But still, they kept going as if there were. Without no hope for any larvae or no goal, and still they were keeping their organisation. And for me, this is, I think, most exciting. Their, how to say, will to live. Yeah, they are doing everything for survival.

And maybe they were not feeling hopeless. Isfand's crew ended up rescuing the ants. They put a long piece of wood near that rusty pipe so the ants could escape. And most of them did. They went back to the nest and just got back to work. And do you think they knew? Oh, I'm home again. I think yes. Yeah, because for the ants, it's their nests like a safe haven.

Our second story, Florence Nightingale. This comes to us from another Gimlet show, a podcast called Every Little Thing. And on this show, people call in with questions and the team answers them. A couple of weeks ago, I called in with my own question. I'd read an article about some ants

nursing each other back to health. And I was like, what? How do ants nurse each other? Flora Lichtman, the show's host, looked into it. Are you ready to go down the anthill? I am. Are you dying with anticipation? Yes.

Are you feeling antsy? Yes. There are antsies in my panties. Let me introduce you to the main antraction. Hi, Wendy. That is Eric. Hello, I'm Eric Frank, and I study the behavior of ants. So he studies ants in Cote d'Ivoire.

So where you would imagine lions. Zebras. Zebras. I translated it in my head. But Eric's not interested in these postcard animals. He is focused on ants, and one species in particular, the matabile ants. They're big, about an inch long, black, and they sting. And they're very particular about their diet. So this is an ant that basically only eats termites. So it's a military-like species in Africa that hunts termites in large groups of up to 500 or

600 ants. Whoa. This is going to get Game of Thrones-y without the sexual violence, and I am in. Yeah. Speaking of Game of Thrones, do you want to guess the telltale sign of a Matabele ant colony? Like how you would spot one on the landscape? Are they decorative?

You might say that. So you can find the nest easily by just finding a pile of termite heads. Termite heads. Oh! Around their entrance. And they leave that entrance a few times a day to hunt. They go to kill termites and bring them back to the nest to eat them.

I'm just trying to get a visual. So you've got like a massive termite mound and then all these ants going after it? Not exactly. Termite mounds are basically impenetrable fortresses. So attacking them would be futile. But the termites, they also need to eat. So they normally go out of the nest to forage for basically dead wood. And that's where the ant attack happens. Can I score this, by the way, as you go? Please.

So in the early morning when the sun comes out, the scouts leave the nest searching for the termites. What do you think? I love it. So the ant scouts find the termites, then they go back to the nest and rally their army. And then they march to the battleground in a long, terrifying column. And at the front of the column is the scout that found the termites, which is basically leading them to the termites. What does it look like from above? It's basically like a big black snake, like up to two or three meters long.

Whoa! And when they get to the termite site, the scout stops. And somehow the other ants know to stop as well. And it's probably a chemical signal, but we don't know yet. So basically all the ants gather, they're all around the scout, and then it gives another signal basically to go. We attack now. And then all the ants attack all together over the hunting ground of the termites.

And yeah, they normally have no idea the ant is coming before they attack. The ants charge in and the bloodbath begins. So they grab the termite and then they sting them with the venom. And yeah, that kills them basically. Oh. And there you have all the dead termites lying around. And for the next four or five minutes, the ants will be collecting the termites in big piles, putting them in their mouths and starting to carry them back to the nest basically. Your mouth is agape. It is agape.

It is agape. I'm really imagining the whole scene, like the scouts, like, that's the pheromones or whatever. And they're like, come on, come on. Sisters. Sisters, let's do this. And they're all like, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah. That was some of that garble was a termite dying.

I could tell. It sounded just like it. Right? It's not just the termites who suffer, though. That was some of that garble was a termite dying. I could tell. It sounded just like it. Right? It's not just the termites who suffer, though. War is hell on both sides. Every fight, they have at least four to six injured ants that are lying on the battleground. A common injury? Lost limbs.

Oh. And this is when the behavior you called about kicks in. Ants helping ants. And here's how it works when the behavior you called about kicks in. Ants helping ants. And here's how it works when the ants come marching in. So the injured ant actually gives out a help call. A chemical signal that says, I'm injured. Help me. And when their comrades get closer, the injured ant makes a small scene, kind of like the French national soccer team.

They will be acting more injured. They will fall over. They will lie on the ground flailing with their legs. And the healthy ant will come over, pick up the injured ant in its mandibles. And then the injured ant stops flailing, like tucks its legs in, so it's easier to be carried. And what I discovered was that they carry them back to safety. That's so nice of them. Because that would sound like a pain in the ass.

You know when I was younger and like our family would go on hikes, I am the youngest of four, and I would be like, Dad, I don't want to walk anymore. And he'd say, all right, you want to do injured soldier? But he would literally just like pull me over his shoulder. He was carrying you like a sack of potatoes? Yes. Or an injured soldier? Or an injured soldier or an injured ant, I now say.

I hope did you tuck your legs in and stay very still? Like your dad, I suspect, these ants don't give free rides to everyone either. So actually, we have some kind of triage, which basically means they only help ants that are still able to be useful for the colony. If you're too heavily injured, if you lost four or five legs, for instance, the ant itself will actually not call for help and be left behind at the battlefield. And in the end, it's the injured ant itself that decides if it should be rescued or not. Unconsciously, of course. Wow. So they won't send out a signal if they're like, I'm gone. Exactly. Yeah.

Eric found if they lost more than three legs, they didn't send out the signal. So what happens next? This is the most amazing thing. After triage, a tiny worker ant actually comes out carrying a miniature bugle and a small Cote d'Ivoire flag, plays taps, and lays a flag over the wounded ant. It's really quite moving. That's beautiful. That's really quite moving. That's beautiful. That's really beautiful. Those are the ants being left for dead, but there are also the ants being rescued.

Do they take them back to the ant colony? Do they take them to a little ant doctor? Yes, they do. Injured ants, once they arrived inside the nest, were being treated by their nest mates. So other ants would walk towards them, grab the injured leg with their mouth and start licking it and cleaning it.

Did you know that ants have tongues? I did not know they had tongues. Yeah, they have a kind of tongue, yes. In my head when I was imagining it, they have like human tongues. It's a little orangey tongue, you could say. At what point do they ask for the insurance card? They lick the wounds and then they're like, if we're to go any further, we're going to need to know. Ant Care for All is actually awesome. First of all, no weights.

They treat the wound a lot in the first half hour after injury and they're removing everything that was on the wound, similar to how we would clean it. we would put some sterile alcohol maybe or something to clean it and then bandage it up. And the treatment is very effective. Eric found that almost all the ants who got the treatment survived, and most of the ones that didn't get it died. Wow. He suspects the nurse ants are producing some kind of antibiotic in a gland on their body. So we can't use that antibiotics, by the way, right? Eric says there might be applications down the road. For grant funding, am I right?

Did his, to do this experiment, he pulled off a bunch of ant legs, didn't he? He did, yeah. For science, for knowledge, for this moment right here. How do you feel about that, Flora? I feel like I'm complisant. Do other ants do this, or is this special for Cote d'Ivoire ants? That's what I wanted to know, too.

Is this a one-off? So to find out, we called up ant researcher Christina Kwapich, and she said, yeah, they're the only ones who do this. To perform medical care on another individual and have that individual improve in health and then recover to function again is extremely unusual. I think it may be wholly unique among animals that aren't human. And like a lot of humans can't do it either. Yeah, I mean, some of us have to go to university for many years to become good nurses. While Christina says that this nursing behavior is super rare, just a few months ago, she published a paper that described a different kind of ant doing something that was also

particularly impressive. She told Flora about these ants that live in the deserts of California, and they were risking their own skin to protect their brethren. That's right, they were rescuing them. OK, so here's where it starts. Just as the sun comes up in the deserts, these ants go out each morning, and they're collecting food to feed their babies. But often, they're not alone. Spiders are watching them, and they're ready to trap the ants and eat their babies. But often, they're not alone. Spiders are watching them. And they're ready to trap the ants and eat their breakfast. These little spiders also come out from under rocks

and start building their webs along the foraging route that the ants have established. And what Christina saw is that sometimes, when an ant got stuck in the web, good Samaritans came to the rescue. They cooperate to pull off the little legs of the spider web, the sticky strands sticking to the sand. They pull those up. They tear apart the web. The spider usually runs away at this point. And then the ant, which is ensnared in the sticky silk, is taken out and carried back

home to the nest where the silk is removed. So the ants aren't just detangling their sisters. They're also dismantling the web. Oh! That's really rare. So most animals run from traps or they avoid them. But in this case, the ants face the trap head on. That is amazing.

Because is that dangerous for them? Like, do some of them get eaten by the spider? Yes. Every now and then, a rescuer gets killed. So why would they do that? Like, why would they risk themselves like that? This is the whole thing about being in a colony. Your livelihood is connected to the livelihood of the colony. And the analogy that

people make is that ants are like cells in a body. Yeah. That the survival of the body is more important than the survival of any one cell. What do you think of that? I think these stories are really confusing. The idea that these ultra-complex, altruistic social interactions are coming from these tiny-brained insects, I don't know what to make of that. So I asked Christina, I mean, does this research suggest that ants are empathetic, that they see their nestmates and feel like they want to help them? I don't think it suggests that ants are empathetic, that they see their nestmates and feel like they want to help them? I don't think it suggests that ants are empathetic. You can measure things like that in animals by looking at facial expressions. For instance, expressions of pain when an individual

sees another animal experiencing pain. Ants have very blank faces, so we can't ask that question of them. No, no, we can't ask the ants why they do what they do or even look at their faces to try to guess. But after the break, we'll visit a creature that doesn't even have a face. And yet, it makes an even bigger sacrifice. Welcome back. We've just heard stories of ants fighting for their survival and even risking their own lives to protect their friends. It's not behaviour you think of when you look at an ant ambling across your kitchen counter in search of crumbs.

So what is driving them to do this? To help us understand that, we need to go to a creature that's even smaller than an ant, one with even less brain power. So we went to a lab in Manhattan to meet this biology professor. My name is Derek Brazil. I am a professor at Hunter College. To show us what these creatures look like, Derek went to a drawer and pulled out a little plastic dish

and put it on the microscope. Yeah, so this plate is pretty full of cells. Oh, yeah. They're, like, just little blobs. Mm-hm. That's Meryl Horn, a producer on our show, looking down the microscope. So in the microscope,

we can see lots of individual clear, round cells with little speckles on them floating in a liquid. We're looking at a slime mold. It's an amoeba. If you didn't know what you were looking at, it kind of looks like little drops of dirty water. And where does it normally live in the wild? It lives in temperate soil. So if they were in the wild, let's say I'm one of those like individual amoebas, like what am I doing? What am I thinking? You're mostly thinking where can I get my next food? So they eat bacteria and fungi that live in the soil. So can you point out where the brain is? There is no brain. Yeah, no brain,

just a little cell. But the thing, the behavior that we've come here to see, kicks in when these little cells get hungry. So what the cells do is they actually are able to talk to each other. So they send out this chemical. And what that does is it tells the other cells that I'm here, I'm starving, come towards me. So they pick up this signal. I'm starving, I'm starving, I'm starving, come towards me. So they pick up this signal. I'm starving, I'm starving, I'm starving. And they come together and form this entirely new and weird shape. Derek pulls out a petri dish to show it to us. Whoa.

These amoebas now look like a big ball on top of a stalk. I think they look to me like lollipops. Yeah, you know, you can't even tell that, like, it's made up of all these little cells. It just looks like one big lollipop. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So why are they doing this? Why are they forming this lollipop?

Well, what scientists think is happening here is that they're grouping together like this so that the ones in the ball are more likely to get, say, blown about by the wind. Blown to a place where their babies might find food. I kind of think of it like a dandelion, where the seeds are in the puff on the top, and then when the wind comes along it blows the seeds away and if for example the seeds weren't in a puff and they were like stuck at the bottom the wind wouldn't blow them very far. While this is all great news for the amoeba on the top of the lollipop they'll get a feast in their new home. But then what about the ones in the stalk? So they are the ones that die. That's right.

The amoebas that turn into the stalk, they die. Now, some amoebas cheat the system to make it more likely that they'll end up on top. What the cheaters do is that they convince the cells around them that she becomes stalks. What do they, like, whisper in their ear, like, stalks are doing great work out there? Basically, yeah. So they whisper in their ear like stocks are doing great work out there? Basically, yeah. So they whisper in the air to become a stock. Those whispers being little chemical signals they send around saying, be a stock, be a stock. But the thing is,

a lot of them don't cheat. And that's probably because if there are too many cheaters, it could spell disaster. If they all cheat, so if they all are trying to get into the spore, then you have a spore mass that isn't lifted up off the ground and no one gets anywhere. So you always have to have at least some of the cells that are going to follow the rules. Otherwise, if everyone cheats, no one wins. How would you feel if you were in the stock? I wouldn't feel anything. I'd be dead. I would feel that I had done a good job in making sure that my brothers and sisters are going to go and lead a nice, healthy, long life.

That's very kind, but they're also kind of suckers, right? They have sacrificed themselves for the greater good. So, the amoebas, these no-brained little cells, they are dying for their sisters. And the fact that amoebas do this, sacrifice themselves so that the other

amoebas can get food and live, tells Derek one thing. And it's not that amoebas have empathy or are really thinking hard about this decision. But rather, it all comes back to those ants, risking it all and fighting for survival. But it's not your survival. It's the survival of your colony. So just like how the ants, how the worker ants, they don't reproduce, but they help support the queen, which reproduces.

The reason why that's useful for them is because they share genetic material with the queen. So by helping the queen, they're helping pass on their genetic material, even though they aren't reproducing. It's the same way with these cells that form the stalk are genetically similar to the ones that form the spore. So by sacrificing themselves, they're allowing for their genetic material through their sisters and brothers to go on. You know, it's not empathy. It's evolution.

That's Science Versus. Next week, healthcare. Can Medicare for All really fix sick America? A whole display of hospital beds and nurses and nurses and doctors, you know, sort of in a formation. And if you're looking for a new podcast, you've got to check out Every Little Thing. Every Little Thing. Every Little Thing. And some episodes that the team reckon that you will love include Fruit Flies,

seriously, where do they come from? F*** Yeah, Can Cursing Make You Stronger? And Twin Spiracies, the truth about twin speak and more. That's Every Little Thing. And while we are sharing the podcast love, a friend of the show, Rose Reed, you heard her in our episode on Bigfoot and online dating. Well, she has just started a brand new show. It's called The Women, The Women, and there's a great interview in it

with the doctor that exposed lead poisoning in Flint. Check it out, The Women. Science Versus is produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman, the women. Flora Lichtman. This episode was edited by Caitlin Kenny and Jorge Just. Fact-checking by Diane Kelly. Mix and sound design by Peter Leonard and Dara Hirsch. Music written by Dara Hirsch, Dan Brunelli, Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, Bobby Lord and um me. A big thanks to Natalie Stroymett, Dr Hema Trigos-Piral, Dr Jack Neff and recording help from Wojciech Oleskiak. A special thanks to the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle-Wilson. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.