Ants The Wonder of Animals

Planet Earth.

Millions of species.

But a few are special.

Thriving.

Dominating.

These are the opportunists.

The collaborators.

The survivors.

So, what makes these animals so successful?

In this series, we'll delve deep beneath the skin,

to reveal the unique features that set some species apart.

New behaviour and the very latest scientific discoveries

will offer fresh insight into the wonder of animals.

One group of animals has truly colonised the Earth.

They number more than 100 trillion.

And consume more meat than all the lions...

..the tigers...

..and the wolves combined.

The ant.

You know, for every human on our planet,

there are more than 14,000 of these.

And, if we were to weigh all of the ants in the world,

they would weigh as much as all of the people.

And the key to their success?

I'll tell you.

Teamwork.

In this episode, we'll explore the ingenious ways

that ants have collaborated to overcome their greatest challenges.

From starting a colony...

..to housing and feeding that colony...

..and finally, protecting it from some unexpected threats.

At every step, it's all about the team.

Dawn in the Arizona desert.

A lone honey ant scratches around in the earth.

It's taking the first steps of a remarkable journey.

Every colony begins with a single ant,

a lone queen like this one.

Within months, it will number tens of thousands of residents.

But to build the biggest and most powerful colony

requires a number of queens working together.

Within a few hours, these pioneers have burrowed deep underground.

Descending into the darkness,

this is the last time that any of them will see the light of day.

They retire to their newly built chambers,

where they'll lay thousands of eggs,

each the size of a pinhead.

Out of these emerge larvae that, within nine weeks,

will grow into sterile female workers.

They share a single mission -

to serve the interest of the team.

Each one destined for a specific role...

..nurse maids to care for the young...

..hunters to forage for prey...

..and soldiers to protect them all.

But first, they must make an extraordinary choice.

Suddenly, the behaviour of the colony changes.

The worker ants begin to bully and harass the queens...

..searching for any sign of weakness...

..testing each queen in turn to seek out the strongest...

..before launching a bloody coup.

The weaker queens are butchered...

..their own offspring are among the executioners.

But there is no room for sentiment.

The strength of the regime is all that counts.

The dead queens are chopped up and fed to the larvae.

Now only the strongest and the most fertile queen remains.

She is the absolute monarch.

As the colony grows, and thousands of residents throng

in the subterranean chambers, the ants face a new challenge.

You see, most ant species nest underground,

so ensuring a constant supply of oxygen is absolutely essential.

Any failure to do so would almost certainly mean

that the entire colony would slowly suffocate.

In Argentina, one ant species has developed

a particularly innovative solution.

These leaf cutting ants have worked together to construct a home

with an ingenious air conditioning system.

The grand design exploits the cool surface wind...

..redirecting this fresh air deep underground.

The architecture and construction are highly sophisticated.

The team builds two distinct sets of tunnels.

As fresh air blows in...

..carbon dioxide is pumped out.

The system is further improved by vents on top of the tunnels,

which help to maintain a constant temperature.

It's the ideal solution for a permanent underground home.

But, some colonies are constantly on the move

and this requires a different kind of team-work.

In East Africa, these driver ants have developed a nomadic lifestyle.

When they move, they take the whole family with them.

All the way from the precious eggs and larvae...

..to the one and only queen.

When it's time to set up home, they form temporary bivouacs.

But the building materials are not the usual earth, sticks and rocks.

These huge metre-wide structures

are constructed from the ants themselves.

With the precious queen safe inside,

this is a royal palace with a difference.

Complete with living columns, walls and ceilings.

Luckily, every ant is more than capable of pulling their weight.

Scientists have calculated that each individual

can hold 5,000 times their own body weight.

The bivouac is the physical embodiment of teamwork.

With the colony complete, the next challenge is to feed the hordes.

Now, in order to do this, the ants must first move as a team

through some of the most challenging habitats on Earth.

Once again, collaboration is key.

The Amazon rainforest.

Vast.

Dense.

And filled with hidden dangers.

These army ants travel en masse wherever they go.

And yet they are totally blind.

Unable to rely on visual clues,

the ants at the front secrete a chemical pheromone -

a clear signal for their comrades to follow.

Each successive ant then lays down more of the pheromone,

eventually turning an unmarked jungle track

into an ant super-highway.

To decipher these chemical codes,

ants draw on a highly developed sense of smell.

They have over 400 distinct odour receptors,

that's five times more than most other insect species.

As the raiding party follows the scent trail,

soldier ants take up their positions to guard the convoy's progress.

Others selflessly lay down their bodies to bridge gaps

and fill potholes...

..allowing the whole team to continue unhindered.

And with this army, no soldier is left behind.

When the column has passed, the downtrodden ants climb up

and join the rest of the team.

The natural world's most efficient traffic system...

..delivering thousands of ants quickly to the front line

so they can hunt together effectively.

In a single year, just one colony of these ants can capture,

kill and consume ten million animals.

This is an army that marches on its stomach

and sheer numbers mean that nothing is off the menu.

A heavily armoured freshwater crab wanders into the path

of the hunting party.

The team swarm over the tough outer defences,

searching for any chinks in its armour.

The large soldier ants target the vulnerable joints,

ripping into the soft tissue.

This allows the smaller workers to climb inside the legs

and eat the crab from the inside out.

Each member of ant society cooperating to achieve

the seemingly impossible and supply the ravenous hordes.

But when resources are scarce, what then?

In the Arizona desert,

some ants are sacrificed for the greater good of the team.

These are repletes, honey ants that have been

deliberately overfed in times of plenty by the rest of the colony...

..until their abdomens look fit to burst.

They're fixed to the ceiling,

where the liquid is refined to produce a thick honey.

Here they are held in reserve

to feed their comrades when times are hard.

They're living larders, just there to provide a sophisticated solution

to the irregular supply of food in desert.

When it comes to feeding the colony, ant ingenuity and teamwork

has been taken to another level in Argentina.

Although there appears to be plenty of food for these leaf-cutting ants...

..the lush fields are actually deceptive...

..because these leaves are naturally protected with cellulose,

which ants are incapable of digesting.

To combat this, the colony form a production line.

Worker ants use their mandibles to cut up the leaves.

Others then transport the harvest back to the colony...

..where, underground, more ants chew the leaves to create a thick mash.

This mash is then used as compost

to cultivate a particular type of fungus that the ants can eat.

They've been doing this for 50 million years,

making them some of the oldest farmers on the planet.

But ants don't stop at farming fungus.

In Switzerland, these wood ants have a special interest in aphids.

These tiny greenfly eat the sugary sap found in plants.

They then process the sugars and excrete a sweet honeydew

which the ants feed on directly from the aphids' rear ends.

When they've had their fill, the ants return the favour.

Acting as bodyguards, they protect the aphids from hungry predators.

It's teamwork but it's teamwork at a whole new level.

By working together, ants can build new colonies.

Produce entire armies.

Feed the masses.

But this team ethic is also their Achilles heel.

A tightknit colony can breed serious dangers.

Thousands of individuals, living in such close proximity,

make ant colonies particularly susceptible to the transmission of diseases.

And because all of the ants in the colony are siblings,

they are genetically very similar.

A disease that kills one of them could easily kill them all.

Paradoxically, teamwork is still the answer.

These bullet ants have become infected by a parasitic fungus

called cordyceps which is carried by the wind.

It infiltrates the body...

..and eventually explodes out of their brain.

It then releases spores to infect other unsuspecting ants.

A home that took years to build could be annihilated

in no time at all.

To counter this threat,

infected ants are dumped far from the nest...

..sacrificed for the health of the whole team.

Back in Arizona,

the honey ants must fight infection at every stage of their lives,

from the cradle to the grave.

Almost as soon as the queen lays her eggs,

they're coated with antibiotic saliva

that helps keep disease at bay.

Even the larvae are continuously and rigorously cleaned.

If an infected ant does enter the colony,

the reception it receives is rather surprising.

Far from being rejected, it's welcomed. And even cared for.

The others share the infection around,

each one accepting a tiny amount of the fungus.

By actively applying a low level of infection to their healthy bodies,

they build up immunity to the pathogen.

This process of grooming

works like the old method of human vaccination against smallpox,

where low levels of exposure to disease,

help the body generate immunity.

Through sophisticated teamwork, ants have overcome every challenge.

From the initial steps of building and housing a colony

to moving as a group and feeding the entire team.

And when threats come from within, well, then they band together

to protect the colony from infections and disease.

It's this extraordinary team ethic which has allowed ants

to become one of the most numerous animals on planet Earth

and THAT is the wonder of ants.