Stuff You Should Know - Ants! Part 1!

Episode Date: January 4, 2022

Ants are pretty much amazing. So we're gonna spend two episodes talking all about them. Please enjoy! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, Chuck here real quick with some bad news and sad news. Sketch Fest this year in San Francisco, which is where we were going to have our first live show in two years here in a couple of weeks, has been postponed. I believe they're looking to postpone it by a

whole year and kind of rebook the whole festival ideally. But you know with what's going on around the country with Omicron, they didn't feel like they could press forward and as bummed as we are, we think it's the right move as well. So if you have tickets, just stay tuned for an announcement. I think you will either probably be able to, well I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen with them. Maybe a refund, maybe if you hold on to them they're good for next year because we're probably going to book in the same theater. But I'll list it up for announcement soon. And again, all apologies. We're super sad about it. We're really looking forward to getting back out there again. But until further notice, live shows are still on hold. All right now here we go

with the show. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there. And this is Stuff You Should Know, one that I'm super, super excited about and didn't realize that I would be this excited about Chuck because this is a Chuck pick and hats off to you, sir. Yeah, I'm surprised that I had you just never really thought about ants much. Yeah, I mean I've looked at them before but I've never really researched them. I guess I've seen documentaries and then that, of course, the animated cartoon ants years ago kind of got me into it. And I feel like every time I've watched a nature documentary

about ants I'm just like continually amazed. Yeah, I mean they are like amazing and I knew they were amazing. I just had no idea how amazing they were. Like so much so that we could conceivably do a spinoff podcast on just ants if you ask me. I'm willing to do that. I'm just putting it out there right now. Hey, you have fun and knock yourself out. No, no, it has to be both. I'll be the first one to subscribe. It has to be both of us, I'm afraid. We do need to thank the original inspiration for this though. Joey from Tucson. Oh, nice. You remember that? Oh yeah. Was that a listener mail that came in? No, this was during our co-ed. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Our friends at co-ed auctioned off a Zoom with Josh and I and some people were kind enough to donate some money

and we had a Zoom and we hung out with everyone and shot the S and Joey and his mom were on there from Tucson and Joey said, why don't you do one on ants? And I said, all right, Joey, we'll do one on ants. Yeah, and this is going to be a good one because Joey's going to get his money's worth on this, but we're doing Joey not just one part on ants, we're doing a two-parter on ants. That's how cool they are. It's a duble because ants, like you said, we could do a four-parter. Yeah, so just to kind of start, people I think can very easily take ants for granted. They're very small. They kind of typically mine their own business unless you step in one of their nests and they happen to be imported red fire ants, which you do not want to mess with.

So they're just kind of easy to overlook, but when you start to kind of dig into things like the number of ants on earth or the kind of things they're responsible for on earth, you come to realize like ants actually pretty much dominate the terrestrial ecosystems. They're apparently found everywhere except for Antarctica, despite the name. Yeah, they're very hardy little creatures. They're 130 million years old from the Cretaceous period, so they actually survived the Cretaceous tertiary extinction event. They've been around forever. They will be around forever. Some parts of the world, they make up about half, and this is places where there are lots and lots of insects, and they make up in some places half of the insects. Wow. So like if you just took all the

insects in one ecosystem and spread them all out, half of them would be ants. Half of them would be ants. Don't step on them. Sure. We said it before. Don't kick over those ant hills, kids. No. Don't torch them with with lighters and hairspray cans. You need to leave those ant hills alone. Right. One other surprising thing about their evolutionary history that I was not hip to until recently is that ants are closely related to wasps. In fact, they think that they are evolved from wasps, and one of their closest relatives is the muddawber wasp. Yeah. I mean, if you look at a wasp, it sort of looks like a intimidating flying ant. And ants have stingers, and a lot of them have venom. So I mean, it's not like you just couldn't

possibly accept that fact. That's right. And that is a bit of a misnomer because I still say bitten by an ant. I got an ant bite. But that's not what's going on. You're actually getting stung. The stinger on an ant is a modified ovipositor. And the little worker ants, we're going to talk all about this later, but worker ants are sterile females. They can't produce eggs. So their ovipositors are stingers, and the male ants don't have stingers. And as you'll see, like if you're at all familiar with our bee episode or a wasp episode, a lot of this stuff is going to seem really familiar, again, because their ants are kind of pretty closely related to those things. They're in the same order, hymenoptera, as we'll see. But they do all sorts of amazing things,

and we're going to get into all of this. But ants are, they turn the soil, they move materials and energy up and down underground. They turn over more soil than the earthworm. They're extremely important little animals running around on earth. So the next time you see an ant, especially after you hear these two episodes, hopefully you'll salute them or at least step over them or do something to show a little bit of respect. How many ants are there? So I've seen the one I've seen. Dave Ruse helped us out with this one. The number he came up with, I've seen pretty much almost everywhere, which is something on the order of 10 to the 15th power adult ants on earth right now. So about a quadrillion, which is not just a number a four-year-old says.

No, it's a thousand trillion to be precise, which is- That sounds more like a number than a four-year-old says. Right. If you, I mean, if you think about it, how many humans do we have on earth right now? Something like seven, eight billion, I believe? Sure. This is a thousand trillion ants. And there's a lot of debate also, Chuck, about which one weighs more, calculating the biomass. Got the ants.

It's all over the place. One of the figures I've seen bandied about is that ants, if you weight everything, every living thing on earth, ants would make up somewhere between 15 to 25% of that weight, which is a lot. But a lot of people say, well, that just completely dwarfs how the biomass of humans. And that's not necessarily true. So it's kind of up in the air. Yeah, let's put it this way. If all of the ants got together and they decided they wanted to go to war with humanity, it would be a pretty intimidating fight. I'm not sure who would win. But humans would probably lay waste to themselves to lay waste to the ants. You know

what I mean? Well, yeah. And also, I mean, some ants, especially those red fire ants, they eat flesh. Like ants are not all just herbivores. They're generally omnivores, which means that they'll eat flesh as well, which means they'll eat human flesh if you'll stand still long enough and let them devour you. Yeah. What's that fire ant? They can strip a frog in 12 hours to the bone. To the bone. Yeah. It's pretty amazing. So the thing we have going for us are our legs are much longer than an ant's legs. So we can outrun them very quickly and just get away from an ant. And

then by the time we're out of its purview, it forgot we ever existed, probably. Right. Unless there's another colony of three million ants waiting for you. Yeah. On the other side. Depending on what part of Europe you're in, they're very well maybe too, as we'll see. Right. So we're going to, you know, this is going to follow the order of kind of our usual animal-y insecty episodes, except I think this one's going to have even more to sort of random amazing facts inserted along the way, right? Yeah. I don't think we'll be able to help that.

All right. So I guess let's talk, I mean, let's go ahead and start off with some of these amazing ant things. If you study ants, you're a mermicologist. And it feels like we've said that recently, but I think I might be thinking of something else too. You're thinking of Eugene Merman. That's what I'm thinking of. Oh man. I love that guy. Yeah. He's a very lovable guy. What a good dude. I'm so glad of his Bob's Burger success. Oh yeah.

Good to have him do a nicer guy, but he's not an ant specialist. Let's, maybe let's just start off with these ant rafts. Yeah. Well, that's one of the amazing things that people have figured out about ants is if you drop, especially red imported fire ants, they're just called fire ants in their native South America, but here in North America, they really are honestly called red imported fire ants. And they, if you drop them into water as like a ball, they'll spread out and they will flatten themselves into a raft that is actually a pretty great well made raft. And they do this just kind of without even thinking about it.

Yeah. So, I mean, these things can be large. They can be about as big as a dinner plate. We're talking hundreds of thousands of ants. And what they've learned that was this researcher in particular, Georgia Tech that you dug up. I mean, not literally dug up. Yeah. He was dead when I met him. He's still alive. I reanimated him. Yeah. And said, Mr. David, who what do you have to say?

So he, I think he's from Georgia Tech and he focused on these rafts because it's such an amazing thing. And what they learned or one of the things he learned was that when these ants are building out this raft, they're like basically walking over the other ants until they get to the edge. And then they were like, Oh, well, I guess, you know, they communicate to each other and we'll get to how they communicate later, but they communicate to each other only when they get to that edge. Hey, you got to get down here with us and make this thing larger. Yeah. Yeah. And they basically weave themselves into an interlocking pattern to where they lay down perpendicular to the ant that is the part of the edge of the raft then.

And then they become the part of the raft sticking out. It's like a lattice, right? Yeah, exactly. And they connect themselves to their fellow ants with multiple places with their interlocking arms. They also push away at the same time, which allows a lot of air in there. And these rafts can float because there's something like 75% air, but the weave is also so tight that the raft is waterproof so that even the ants on the bottom of the raft chuck will survive when they eventually hit dry land again. Yeah. I think they kind of likened it to Gore-Tex basically.

Yeah. So that is one thing that one species of ants can do. And they do this. Here's the thing. You might say, well, that's really neat. That's amazing. Ants don't have brains that can hold plans in their heads like you and I do. Like they can't read a schematic. There's no schematics there for them. And in fact, ants don't even technically have a leader. They just all do these jobs and perform this work somehow. Humans have still yet to figure it out. But as each little ant performs its own job and you've got hundreds of thousands of millions of ants all doing this job following the same system, these really amazing, larger, more complex patterns emerge. And that's how

you get things like ant colonies and ant rafts. And they do it again without a leader and without a brain that could hold a plan in their head. Yeah. I mean, it's 130 million years of hard coding, basically. Like it makes me wonder if 130 million years ago, the ants were like lucky to survive that tertiary extinction. And we're like, we got to get our act together, guys. Yeah. We need to figure out how to make rafts quick. We can't make rafts. We can't do anything. Ants individually can swim. Some species can. They basically, I mean, they can float and they basically do like a little ant paddle. They like to do a dog paddle. I don't think they can swim like great distances. But

if an ant, if some species of ant happen to accidentally fall into water, it's not necessarily the end of them. No, they're not a goner. They don't need to be reanimated yet. They don't. Should we take a break? Sure. Already? Yeah, I think we can. I mean, it's a two-parter. We can do whatever we want. All right. We'll take a break and we'll talk about not rafts, but bridges right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down.

Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck, you teased bridges. What about bridges? What do bridges have to do with ants? Well, first of all, all this stuff you should look up images and videos of when you can. Because talking about it is one thing. But when you really see this stuff happening, when you see an ant raft or an ant bridge, it's pretty remarkable. But army ants, they're a species of ant that we're going to talk more about as well later. But they are nomadic. Usually,

ants kind of root down in one place. But these ants like to travel. And when they're traveling through the forest, if they come across, if they're like walking up a leaf and then they want to get across to another leaf, they will form a little, almost a human bridge. They form a little ant bridge all the way across and can support, you know, it says tens of centimeters, which doesn't sound like much. But when you're an ant, it's remarkable. Yeah. So there's something going on here. You'll start to notice like, there's something about an ant when it says, okay, I'm coming, I'm in water and I'm on a ball of other ants in water. Now that I've reached the edge of water, I need to interlock with my partner.

Same thing. When they reach it an end in the road, a gap between the road or the bridge or whatever they're walking on, they have some sort of encoded instinct to lay down and interlock with whoever's part of the bridge behind them to form their own part of their bridge. And then even more astounding than that kind of behavior is the fact that they can support the weight of the ants crawling over them, using them as a bridge. And then once the traffic dies down, they climb back up like in the opposite direction. They disassemble the bridge on the other way and then go along their merry way on the forest floor. Yeah, that's one, they say socialism doesn't work. But I was wondering how they, so I saw an ant bridge spanning between two leaves,

so it was off the ground. How does it, and the only thing I could figure like, how does it, how did they all get across to the other side at the end of this whole thing? I don't, I don't know. I don't, because you'd think it'd be like one of those rope bridges where you cut one in and it goes... Well, I think that might be what happens, but I mean, this is just a guess, but I have a feeling at the end of that bridge, they all just go really fast as after it disattaches to get to, and if they're strong enough to hold each other across the span, then I guess they're strong enough to hold that last few centimeters as it dangles, you would think, right? Yeah, yeah, they seem to make like preter naturally intelligent use of

things like physics and forces and loads and all sorts of stuff. And to be honest, like I don't feel like a jackass for not knowing the answer to what you're saying, because we do not understand ants very well. It's more like we humans are in the G whiz phase of studying ants. Like we can't, we can see what they're doing, but we can't really explain how they're doing it in a lot of cases, which makes them even more fascinating to me. But, but Chuck, I suspect that once we fully understand ants, it will revolutionize our own behavior in the way that we see the world and the way that we act ourselves, because we're going to learn a lot from them. Oh, yeah. But the problem is humans don't won't work together like that because

ants are a selfless society. Yeah. That works in concert to accomplish a greater goal. Maybe we'll figure out how to use them to like more efficiently deliver packages from e-commerce for us. Right. That's not flying them and dropping them from a drone. Right. Even more efficient than that. All right. So that's just a bit of a tease of some of the amazing things some species of ants can do. I think we need to get down to kind of the basics like we do with all of our insect friends and animal friends and just talk about the makeup of these little guys. Yeah. So they're insects. Like I said earlier, they're from the order Hymen up Terra. So there's bees, wasps, ants, they're all pretty much in the same little group right there.

But there's at least 10,000 species of ants. Apparently some botanists, not botanists who don't know what they're talking about, we'll say 14,000. And then some entomologists will say, yeah, the botanists was right. 14,000 is how many species of ants there are. Botanists are like, why they keep cutting my leaves? Yeah. Can you please ask your ants to stop doing that? So what the botanists say? If we're talking, and again, since we're not starting our own side podcasts all about ants, we're going to talk about a few different species. Ant rant, by the way. Ant rant, not ant rind. No, ant rant, featuring the works of vine rand instead of listener mail.

Who is the opposite of ants, actually. But we're going to talk about the main ones you might find here in North America. One, of course, is the odorous house ant, aka the sugar ant or the coconut ant. These are, you know, I love ants, but these are the problem ants in my life. Really? Occasionally. Yeah. These are the little black ants that, you know, if you have something out on your counter, can come into your house in a nice little single fly line. And we'll talk about those lines later. And they will eat whatever you have sitting out on the counter. If it's a little crumb of a Twinkie, which makes me really want to eat a Twinkie. I haven't done that in years, probably since our Twinkie episode. Sure. But it will,

they will send a lot of ants after it. And they, they're called odorous because apparently I've never really noticed a smell. But if you kill them, they smell like a rotten coconut or like a blue cheesy odor. Yeah. And I'm like, rotten coconut doesn't help at all. Like, I don't understand what a rotten coconut smells like. Blue cheese I understand more that I get. That's not a good smell, but I have never, ever smelled an ant that smelled like blue cheese or even rotten coconut. I haven't either. And I try not to kill any ants, but invading sugar ants can be a problem. I got you. Yeah. Sugar ants is what I've always heard them called too. So that's the odorous house ant is the same thing as a sugar ant? Yeah. Right. Okay. Because we don't, we're not like very bourgeois.

We keep our sugar just on a mound on the kitchen counter and we have a big problem with those ants too. Yeah. What about your next favorite, the pavement ant? Yeah, the Malcolmus, the Stana Vicious, if only. They are the ones that you find like on the sidewalk mainly, maybe under rocks. And I don't think they're a whole lot different than the odorous house ant, are they? I honestly don't know. I think maybe they don't come in your house. They're more like, they just hang out outside on the sidewalk. Okay. You know, and wait for you to come to school. I like that. Pavement ants. Yeah. I think what that describes is like where, yeah, where you'll find them, like under stones and sidewalks and all that. Because a lot of ants, like more than

just the pavement ant make their nest under concrete. I'm not sure why, maybe just for protection or whatever from the elements, but there are plenty of ants that seem to appreciate concrete slabs for nesting. You got your carpenter ant, which are those big daddies. They will bore into wood. I don't know if there is a big problem with termites. I haven't really found them to be in my own life, but yeah. No, those are the ones I grew up with. They're like, they're huge. Are those the big black ones? Yes. They're enormous ants, but they're almost like friendly. Like they do not, they don't sting you. I think they might be stingerless. They're certainly not venomous. They'll like crawl on your finger and just kind of explore and

you almost can make friends with them weirdly, but they're the friendliest ants I've ever encountered. Yeah. I'll do that. If I see a carpenter ant, I'll put my finger down and see if it wants to come up and say hi. You know, I've never seen one down here. I've only seen them in Ohio. I didn't even know they were down here. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. We got carpenter ants. The ones I did know were down here. I found out the hard way. Right after we moved down here, I realized that I was standing in a pile of carpenter ants and that was my introduction to them. Like maybe a month or two after we moved down to the south. Oh, no, no. Carpenter ants or fire ants? Fire ants. Did I say carpenter? Yeah. No, no. I mean fire ants. Yeah, those are no good. Again, I'm not going

to like try and kill their nest or anything like that. You just avoid them basically. It's true. It is true. It is true. That's true. It's true. But like you say, if you happen to step on one, they can be pretty aggressive though. They'll come after you. Oh man, they will. They'll just keep going after you. And again, it looks like they're biting you because it hurts and it stings and they're biting their mandibles, but you can't feel whatever bite they're giving you with their mandibles because they're too small. It's that stinger that's getting you in the venom that they produce inside. That's right. No good. Very painful. Leave little red bumps. Yeah, to say the least. And then the

itch and then you can't help but scratch them and you scratch whatever little welt grows up after them. You scratch that off. It's not good. Did you get stung a lot when you were standing in one? Yes. Oh yeah. It was really bad. Momo got the same treatment too when she was a little puppy. Oh no. She made the worst sound I've ever heard in my life. And luckily, Yumi had just done some research on fire ants and found that if you are ever covered in fire ants, do not wash them off because I think those might be the kind that swim, but also that will make them clean even further to whatever they can on your body. You need to stand there and take the pain. You brush them off until they're done. Yeah, right. Exactly. Just eat the pain.

Right. It won't last long. But you brush them off with your hand. Do not use water because it actually makes them like they, it's one of those things where they're like, oh, douse with water, hang on even tighter. Like they're making a wrap with your leg and then they're biting even worse. So luckily Yumi had told me that like a week before and my instinct, I was walking Moe near this pond. My instinct was to basically just dunk her in this pond or else get a bunch of pond water on her to rinse it off. And I stopped myself and just brushed them off, but it would have made it so much worse. But Moe doesn't like fire ants either now. Moe probably doesn't like being dunked in a pond either. Just like on a nice walk. You were going to do what to me when I was

a kid? Yeah. I guess we should talk about, you know, we got to talk about mouth parts, this part of stuff you should know. So you got to, if we're going to talk about the ants body, we'll go from the head backward. The head has those two antennae and they, you know, we're going to say things like smell in here with quotation marks, with air quotes. It's air quotes. I like air quotes. Okay. But that's the antennae is what they use to smell or their version of smelling and pheromones and stuff like that, which we'll get to in greater detail later on. Yeah, which seemed to be basically the way that they communicate. They communicate a few other ways, which we'll talk about, but those pheromones are aces as far as ant communication

goes. It's pretty cool. They also have, sometimes they'll have multiple kinds of eyes. Some ants have compound eyes, which have tons of different lenses. And, you know, the image on each lens is kind of combined into an image in the ant's brain, or other ones have much more simple eyes called Ocelli or Ocelli, which are, they just basically sense light. And then some ants have both. But the ones who just have Ocelli are almost blind, but don't feel bad for the ants, because they are, they can sense other things like pheromones with their antennae. That's right. We've talked about the mandibles a little bit, but those are the little pincers at the front. And, boy, some of the mandibles on some of these species of ant are really large and

scary looking. Yeah. I can't remember which one, but I saw one picture. It may have been the Australian one that just will kill you basically. The bulldog ant? It might have been the bulldog ant. Yes. I saw that picture too, where it actually uses its mandibles to clamp onto you at the same time it's stinging you too. And it has taken at least three lives in Australia that's been documented, the bulldog ant. Just another Australian thing that can kill you. But so as bad as the bulldog ant is, apparently the bullet ant has the worst sting, not just of any ant, but of anything you could possibly be stung by in the world. Then what's the deal with that one? I saw it. So there's something called the Schmidt pain scale that was developed by a guy named

Justin Schmidt. And he basically just let himself get stung and then rated it and described this stuff. That's what he did. We're going to do a short stuff on it someday. I was about to say, man, we have to. But he gave the bullet ant a level four rating on his index, which is four, which is the highest, as bad as it gets. But he described it as like walking over flaming charcoal with a three inch nail embedded in your heel. That's what a bullet ant sting feels like. And it's apparently other people who have, if you go on YouTube, like survivalists and outdoor people, they'll find out what's the most painful sting you can get. And then they'll go purposely get stung by it and then describe it. It's kind of like people eating ghost peppers on YouTube

videos with insects. And apparently most people who have been stung by a bullet ant agree, like it's as bad as it gets. Geez. I found this one ant, if we're talking mandibles, it supposedly has the fastest bite in the world, the Latin American trap jaw ant. And it uses its mandible to jump. So if you look at videos, they basically thought this is what was happening, but they weren't sure because these things can really leap like three or four inches across the room. And they filmed it with a super slow mo up close camera. And their bite is so fast, it accelerates 100,000 times the force of gravity, 145 miles per hour with a force equaling 500 times its body weight. Wow. So I think it just pinches down in the ground so fast it shoots

the ant back out of harm's way or whatever. Okay. So that's what I was trying to figure out if it does like a cartwheel or a somersault. So it bites and propels itself backward. Yeah. And they will somersault. I mean, because I don't think they have control, like after they, there's so much force and speed. Like I saw slow mo videos of them, like if they're falling down in a little hole in the sand or something, they'll snap that jaw and they will just slow mo back flip like four or five inches out of that thing. And it makes this... It should. Yeah. It's pretty amazing, the trap jaw ant. That is amazing. So that's all in the head, right? You got your eyes, your mandibles,

your mouth. There's a little mouth that, I mean, the ant has to eat and everything. Yeah. They don't have ears. No. We should point out if we're talking about the head, but they do hear by way of vibration. I think there's an organ below the knee that senses vibration. Below the knee? I didn't see that one. Yeah. Man, it just keeps getting better and better. Okay. So you move a little further back on the ant and what you'll find is the next little segment of the body called the mesosoma, which is not particularly interesting other than the fact that this is where the ants, three pairs of legs, it's six legs come together on the ant. So it's super muscular because this is how the ant propels itself forward and does all sorts of

neat things, climbing, hand-to-hand combat, all carrying, all sorts of stuff. So it's a very muscular part of the ant, the mesosoma. Yes. Very muscly. You have the pediol, which is basically the waist of the ant between the mesosoma and the gaster. But if you see, you can see an ant kind of stand up at the waist where it's a little front legs are off the ground, it's bending there at the pediol. Yeah. It's kind of like, you know, those buses that are like two buses, but they're connected by some weird like plastic membrane. And when they turn a corner, you're like, oh God, oh God, oh God. But then they pull it off somehow. That to me is like the pediol for the ant. I've never ridden on one of those buses. It's not. It doesn't look like it's

held together any better when you're inside the bus. Yeah. It looks like a lot of city buses. I will say though, traveler's tip, Emily and I, I think I've said this before, we took a bus in Manhattan one time, which we had never done before. We were always on the subway or in a cab or something. And we happened to be somewhere and we needed to get somewhere else and we saw the bus. And I said, I think we can just get on this thing and it'll take us where we want to go. And it was like, it was like a, it felt like a tourist bus. It's like, it's a great way to see the city. Well, it was a sightseeing bus. No, no, no. I was like, it was red and I sat on the roof. They didn't have a roof on the top. No, it was a regular city bus. But that's my point is like,

for very little money. I see. The only difference is there's not some dummy with a microphone telling you about everything. I got you. I got you. But a knowledgeable bus driver will tell you where some of the stars live. Yeah. Or at least where you're stopping next. Sure. Yeah. Sit down and shut up. That's what they say. Where are we? Are we at the, well, I think the patio, we did mention that some of them have two of these wastes. Yeah. The post-pediol, if you want to show off as an ant, you might have two of them. Be like, I can go two different ways at once. Watch me go. And then you have the gaster and that's that rear part. That's where the organs are housed. That's where the heart is. Although it does not pump blood. It has a colorless liquid. There are no

lungs, isn't that right? Yeah. They breathe, they basically just do oxygen exchange, oxygen, carbon dioxide exchange, two little holes that they have all over their body called spiracles. That's right. And those are connected through a network of tubes. And I think just the ants movement is what makes that air exchange happen. That is so cool. That's very cool. Yeah. The gaster makes the mesosoma feel really inadequate as far as body segments go. No, just the importance in the stuff that it's doing, you know? Okay. Because it has so much important stuff in it. Well, it's got the heart. It's got that stinger. Mm-hmm. The reproductive organs. Some ants can spray formic acid from their gaster. If you come up to an ant and your ant size, it'll just spray in your face with acid

and say, get back. Wow. And then what if it's a, what'd you say, a trapdoor ant? It'll just spring away completely out of sight in the blink of an eye, in the blink of a compound eye. Yeah. I like trapdoor though. I bet there's a trapdoor ant. But what's it called? The trapjaw ant. Oh, I call the trapdoor ant. Yeah. But I bet there's a, I guarantee you there's a trapdoor ant. I was thinking a Castlevania just then. They have two stomachs generally. And they, one is for eating and, you know, digesting their own food. But they also will share food. And that's what that second stomach is for. Because they practice trophallaxis is when they exchange food with their, like if, you know, you go out and forage, but the other ants are back,

they're working on taking care of the queen or whatever they got to eat. So they'll bring back food in their second stomach and then transfer it either mouth to mouth or mouth to anus. Pretty nice. Pretty nice. That is very, very kind if you think about it, you know. It really is. So one of the things we talked about earlier, I think when we were talking about ant bridges and how they can support so much weight, partially it's because they have like most insects, chitin exoskeleton that can withstand forces like 3,000 times greater than the ant's body weight. So that's how you let ants walk all over you if you're another ant without even batting an eyelash. That's right. And they are super, super, super strong. I mean, I know there are a lot of insects

that can do whatever X times their body weight, but it's tough to beat the ant as a general rule. Some of them can carry up to 50 times their own body weight. And apparently it's due to their small size. And the reading I got from this was that their muscles are just dense. They have a greater cross-sectional area relative to their body size compared to other kind of all other animals. So I think that's just like a really dense muscle. That's pretty cool. So they're muscular and they have a strong exoskeleton. They're just tough. That's right. And like you said, they could be found everywhere. So I say we take our second break now and then come back and talk a little bit about what ants eat. What ant eat? We'll be right back.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in

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some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck. So we came back to talk about what aunt eat. And I think I said earlier that ants are omnivorous, right? So that means they'll eat flesh. Like don't fool yourself. Given a chance

if you lay still long enough, or if somebody sticks you to the ground and slathers you in honey around some red fire ants, they will eat your body. So will your dog. Your dog would too. Don't be mad at your dog. Your dog's just trying to stay alive. And it's always just been curious what you tasted like, you know? Oh man, anytime you hear those stories, it's just so disturbing. It really is. Like the dog that eats the person that was just like in a bad drunk or whatever. Oh, wow. No. It's like passed out. No. I haven't, I'm not going to tell it, but I know someone personally who their dog ate part of their, they're not there, but someone, they lived their roommate's foot

because the roommate's foot was asleep and they were passed out. Like down to the, close to the bone. Wow. I know. It's disturbing. Wow. And you know somebody. Yeah, I'm not going to get into all that, but it's, it's, it's somebody I know. But it's not like somebody you know from like the, the snowboards or something like that. No, no, no. It's a personal, a personal human who told me this happened to them and their roommate. Wow. It's not friend of a friend of a friend kind of thing. What happens to the dog after that? Did they keep the dog? Yeah. Yeah. It's a whole thing. Man. I'll tell you off air afterwards. All right. Good Lord. The dog's fine, but I'll tell you. Okay. I did not see this coming at all. I didn't either. Cause we're talking again about

ants and ants, like I said, are omnivorous. Right. I don't even know how I got on this. I think if you lay still long enough in it, we'll eat you down to the bone. It's what we're talking about. And so will your, your friend's roommate's dog. Well, it's actually my friend's dog, but that's a different story. Oh man, that makes it even worse. So wait, wait. Your friend's dog ate your friend's roommate's foot. How do you apologize for that? I don't know, man. It's a weird scene over at this place. There's no cookie cake that they make for that one. Oh boy. The cookie cake might help, but I mean, it'll help. Sure. But you just have to get a generic one. Maybe one of those milk bar, uh, chest buys that might do it. Really anything from

milk bar would work. I agree. Uh, so honey do, let's talk about honey do. I think that's how we can get back on track. Okay. Let's talk about it. Have you ever tried to grow a citrus producing tree? Uh, no. I want a lime tree or a lemon tree, but we don't currently have one. Okay. So one of the worst things that's going to happen to you when you start growing that lime tree are aphids. And you're going to know you have aphids. It's not because you see a bunch of aphids on there, but because all of a sudden there's like sticky stuff running all over your leads, all over your branches, all over the trunk of your little lime tree that you're trying to grow and never did anything to anybody. But now all of a sudden it's really suffering. And what you will

know is that, that you have an aphid infestation. One of the other dead giveaways, Chuck, that you have an aphid infestation on your future hypothetical lime tree is that it will be covered with ants. And those ants are not just they're eating that sticky stuff. They're actually what's what some entomologists refer to as, um, raising these aphids as basically livestock. Chuck. Yeah. So the honeydew and I might, I hope I'm not giving this wrong. It sounds like what they do is, is the aphid pierces the phloem ducts. And then this stuff goes straight through them, the sap, and goes in their mouth, comes out their butt as honeydew. And that's what those ants are. That's their delicious nectar, right? Yes. I don't understand why the ants can't just go to

where the aphids just were and lick the honeydew that's coming out of there. So it must have something to do with, with the aphid, like it's transformed by the aphid physiology, I guess. It's a transformative experience. Like, like the ants, like, yes, I see that the raw ingredient there is coming out of the tree, but I can only, I'm all about the stuff that's coming out of this aphid little bottom. That's what I want to lap up. I guess, you know, you want, you want that soft serve right out of the machine. I guess so. But they are crazy for this stuff. So much so that, again, that they take care of these guys. They do. So they will herd aphids to different parts of the plant to say, okay, here, bite into this. And I'm just going to position

my mouth right behind you while you do. Just let it flow right into my face. They will move them around the plant like herds. At night or when it gets cold, they will actually like herd the aphids into their own little nests and protect them and defend them. Ladybugs love to eat aphids. So ants defend aphids against ladybugs. And then if they want an aphid to produce honeydew, they will actually like stroke the aphid to be like, go ahead, let it go. And then they eat the honeydew that comes out of the aphid. But they, the fact is this to me is one of 50 facts of the podcast. They, they herd and treat and raise and protect aphids just like humans do livestock, like cattle and pigs and things that we depend on for, for food. Yeah. Those little supposedly

brainless little insects all in the name of that sweet, sweet butt juice. That's right. Honeydew. That is unbelievable. Yeah. I think that might top off at least this episode's fact of the podcast. That's better than rafts, if you ask me. I think you might be right, dude. So not only do they like honeydew chuck because ants are omnivorous. I'm not sure if I said that yet. They will eat all sorts of other stuff too. Nectar, other insects. They're apparently one of the largest predators of invertebrates wherever they live. Now, will they eat each other? Sure, they will. Yeah, they'll actually cannibalize eggs to, to, for it, so their line will, will, will succeed over like a nest mate's line in some cases. Oh, I also saw this thing,

and maybe this is a decent fact to sort of finish on, that some ants are called slave makers. And they practice slave raiding. So if you're a slave maker ant, you are specialized to another kind of species that's really close to your own, and you basically capture them and force them to work in your colony. What is going on? And they do it. They, they just go over there and they work in their colony like it was their own. And all the, the slave makers, all they do is go and replenish that labor force with more enslaved ants. Man, that is crazy. You have to just stop researching at a certain point. I, I, dude, I, that's what I'm saying, ant ran. Otherwise, it's 80, 18 hours long. Ant ran is coming in 2022, Chuck, from us. Is that, is that good for part one?

I think so. That was a great one to finish on. Nice work. And then as, as is custom, we don't typically do a listener mail for part one of a part two, right? Mm-hmm. And we'll see you guys on Thursday, I guess, for part two of ants, if I'm not mistaken. And if you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email. Send it off to stuffpodcast.ihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this

situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed.

Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.