We’re looking at some of the world’s earliest and most competent farmers.
These leafcutter ants make humans look like newbies.
We’ve been farming for 12,000 years.
Ants have been doing it for 60 million.
We developed plows and shovels.
Ants use their own bodies. Their mandibles are shears that cut through leaves
with incredible efficiency.
The ants drink the sap in the leaves for energy. But they don’t eat them.
Remember, they’re farming here. They’re using the leaves to grow something else.
But first they have to haul the gigantic leaf pieces away. This is no small matter.
For a human, it would be like carrying more than 600 pounds between our teeth.
Then, they clean the leaves.
They crush them.
Cut them into little pieces.
Arrange them carefully in stacks.
They even compost the leaves, with a little of their own poop.
They spread spores around, like seeds.
Over time, a fungus grows.
And that – this highly nutritious fungus – that’s what the ants are after.
They feed it to the colony’s offspring,
millions of them.
For humans, farming was the origin of our civilization. And it’s the same for ants.
They are fungus tycoons. Their colonies are true underground cities
with a bottomless need for resources.
Having this reliable source of food has given them the luxury to specialize.
Leafcutter ants have the most complex division of labor of any ants.
There are tiny worker ants.
And large worker ants.
And enormous half-inch-long soldiers that protect the colony.
Like human farmers, their abundant food source has made leafcutter ants very, very successful.
And this is where two civilizations – ant and human – collide.
From Texas to South America, leafcutter ants are huge agricultural pests. Working stealthily
at night, they can strip an entire tree of its best leaves in just hours.
As their ant civilization grows, they build up the soil in the tropical forest.
But they also pose a threat to those around them.
And in this way, we resemble them more than we might like to admit.