Mauka to Makai
A science blog for the massesGood Stuff
The 15th edition of Scientia Pro Publica is now up at Observations of a Nerd. It’s loaded with good stuff, including our post on Marine Mucilage. Here are some of our favorites:
-A hilarious post about a vegetarian spider at Save Your Breath for Running Ponies
-A look at why the predatory eurypterids, a 2.5 meter-long giant sea scorpion, got so freaking big at Greg Laden’s Blog
-And, from New Voices for Research, a look at the impact of football on the brain
Enjoy—and then get to work. We’re hosting the December 7th edition of Scientia Pro Publica and (even though we think the word is totally overused) it’s gonna be EPIC.
Cool Critter: Pangolin
If it’s not a pinecone…or an artichoke…
…or a komodo dragon…or an anteater…
…then it must be a pangolin!
Disclaimer: Unlike our other Cool Critters, pangolins don’t DO anything especially cool. They do exist, though, and the mere existence of an animal that looks like the love child of an artichoke and an anteater is pretty freaking cool.
Pangolins are long-tongued, long-clawed, toothless, scaly, noxious fume-releasing mammals. In short, they’re weird-ass critters.
Pangolins do their pangolin thing (a.k.a. eat and hide) in the tropical regions of Africa and Asia. There, they scour the ground for anthills and termite mounds and use their long front claws* to tear open the nests. Once the ants are exposed, the pangolin closes its eyes, ears and nostrils (to keep the ants out, of course) and uses its wicked long tongue to collect the little buggers. That “wicked long tongue” attaches to the animal’s pelvis and, when the pangolin sticks it out, is between 10 and 16 inches long**. It (the “wicked long tongue”) is also covered in gobs of sticky saliva that the pangolin uses to pick up small stones, sand and live ants. The pangolin swallows everything as is—remember, it’s toothless—and sends the mess of bugs and grit to its stomach where the grit grinds up the bugs.
As cool as the pangolin’s “wicked long tongue” is, the animal’s real claim to fame is its ability to roll up. In fact, the name pangolin comes from the Malay word “pengguling” which has a few possible meanings. We like “something that rolls up” best. Anyway, when a pangolin feels threatened, it takes advantage of the sharp keratin scales that cover everything but its face by tucking its face under its tail and rolling up. Any predator would surely think it had come across an artichoke, or at the very least an animal that totally wasn’t worth the effort.
Alas, there’s one predator that isn’t deterred by a rolled up pangolin—or by the putrid acid a startled pangolin emits from its anal glands—and that predator, of course, is us. There are eight species of pangolin and all of them are declining. Pangolins are plagued by the usual problems like deforestation and poaching, but the main threat to these funny-looking animals is the growth in illegal pangolin trafficking. The growth in trafficking follows a growth in demand from China where pangolin meat is considered a delicacy and pangolin scales are believed to cure all sorts of ailments. A recent bust found 5 tons of pangolin meat, which officials estimated came from 1,481 pangolins. That’s a lot for a species that only gives birth to one young at a time.
*Because their front claws are so long, they often walk on four legs with their forepaws curled under or on their hind legs, using their tails for balance.
**Pangolins range in size from 12 to 39 inches.
Marine Mucilage, Ick!
What’s grosser than gross? How ‘bout a 100-mile long wad of E. Coli-infested mucus?
(Oh, sorry, did that make you gag? We said it was grosser than gross…)
Mucus wads—also known as mucilages—have been reported in the Mediterranean Sea since at least 1729, but recent research found that the loogies are getting bigger, lasting longer and harboring a whole lot of viruses and bacteria.
Mucilages are made up* of marine snow, a quaint term for little things (“snowflakes”) that fall to the ocean floor. These snowflakes include poop, dead or dying plankton, sand, soot and mucusy waste products from bacteria and plankton. In the coastal waters of the Mediterranean, where the sea is warm, shallow and relatively still, snowflakes glom together to form massive snotty blobs. As the mucilages grow they become heavier and heavier, eventually sinking to the bottom and smothering the ocean floor and all the critters that live there.
Suffocation by snot blanket is a miserable way to go, but this disgusting death is only the beginning of the mess caused by sinking mucilages. The sunken snot kills groundfish, an important, typically slow-growing part of the marine ecosystem. Groundfish are also an important fishery, but demand for snot-smothered fish isn’t particularly high.
All of this is thoroughly repulsive, but it gets grosser. Scientists recently discovered that mucilages are loaded with bacteria (including coliforms and E. coli**) and viruses. They found significantly more bacteria and viruses in a mucilage than in the seawater surrounding the mucilage. That means two things: 1.) Mucilages trap bacteria and viruses and 2.) Mucilages travel and they bring bacteria and viruses with them. In other words, a mucilage isn’t just a sinking blob of snot. It’s a roaming bacteria- and virus-infested snot ball—one that can kill or infect things that swim through it, fish and wetsuit-less humans, alike.
Ick.
Danovaro, Umani and Pusceddu (the scientists who reported that mucilage is teeming with bacteria and viruses) also examined the relationship between mucilage and environmental conditions. They found that mucilages tend to form in areas that people have been overfishing and polluting for years. They also found that mucilages were larger, more widespread and longer lasting when the water was warmer. Mucilages used to be a summer thing, appearing in May or June and vanishing by September. In the last decade, however, the Mediterranean has gotten snottier. Massive mucilages have appeared in November, December and January and lasted through the warm months. In March of 2007 (during a winter that was 2-3° C warmer than the normal average), mucilages stretched along more than 1,500 miles*** of the Italian coast.
Here’s the bottom line: marine mucilage is absolutely disgusting and destructive and, thanks to climate change, we could be seeing a lot more of it.
*The authors write: “Mucilage is made of exopolymeric compounds with highly colloidal properties that are released by marine organisms through different processes, including phytoplankton exudation of photosynthetically-derived carbohydrates produced under stressful conditions.” Aren’t you glad we translate this stuff for you?
**These bacteria are typically associated with the intestines of mammals…In other words, they’re usually found in poop.
***FYI: That’s greater than the distance between New York City and Dallas.
Danovaro, R., Fonda Umani, S., & Pusceddu, A. (2009). Climate Change and the Potential Spreading of Marine Mucilage and Microbial Pathogens in the Mediterranean Sea PLoS ONE, 4 (9) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0007006
Endangered Cuteness
Meet the African wild dog (a.k.a. the African painted dog), perhaps the cutest endangered animal you’ve never heard of.*
African Wild Dog Conservation
Over the last 100 (or so) years, the number of African wild dogs has declined by 99% from 500,000 to 5,000. Most of that decline is our fault. Until recently, people killed wild dogs for two reasons: because they thought the way the dogs kill their prey was inhumane and because they thought the dogs would eat their livestock. They thought wrong. Wild dogs don’t eat livestock and the way wild dogs kill an animal is actually much more efficient (and therefore more humane) than the way lions and leopards do it.
People are still killing wild dogs today, but it’s mostly unintentional—they hit wild dogs on roads built through wild dog habitat and catch wild dogs in snares set to catch bush meat.
People are problematic, but the dramatic decline in African wild dogs isn’t entirely our fault. Lions, hyenas and the wild dogs’ own lifestyle are also to blame. Wild dogs are puny** compared to the other social carnivores that share their turf and that means they get picked on. Hyenas try (and sometimes succeed) to steal wild dogs’ kills and lions often kill wild dogs and then snag their kill for dessert.
How can African wild dogs survive in a land where humans are out to get them, hyenas steal their food and lions gobble them up? They have their ways…granted, given the 99% decline in their population, their ways aren’t necessarily successful.
To survive, African wild dogs have to avoid the big guys (the lions and hyenas) and to do that, wild dogs have to be different. The big guys have big stomachs that allow them to gorge on food when it’s available and wait a while between feedings. Wild dogs are different. With small bellies that allow them to run quickly, but limit the amount of food they can eat at one time, wild dogs are built for frequent, efficient pack hunting.
The whole pack hunts together with the exception of weak or injured dogs and young pups, who will stay with a babysitter. As a pack, wild dogs can take down an impala or a big animal like a wildebeest. Then, they dine by status. The youngest dogs eat first while the older dogs stand guard. When the young’uns have had their fill, the next oldest dogs dive in and so on. When the pack returns from the hunt, they’ll regurgitate for the pups, the babysitters and anyone else they left behind.
African wild dogs are totally dependent on their packs—their incredibly tight-knit lovey-dovey packs***–and that can cause problems. If a pack doesn’t score as much food energy as it needs when it hunts, it won’t have enough energy for reproduction. Without enough energy to reproduce, the pack is less likely to reproduce (says Captain Obvious) and that could lead to a smaller pack. Then, since smaller packs are less likely to have successful hunts, the pack ends up back where it started with too little food energy. This vicious circle is what scientists and economists call a “poverty trap.”
*Cotton-top tamarins are cute too, but in a funny-looking sort of way.
**Adult African wild dogs weigh between 37 and 79 pounds, which puts them somewhere between Springer Spaniels and German Shepherds, size-wise. Hyenas can weigh up to 190 pounds and lions typically weigh between 250 and 500 pounds.
*** Wild dogs are more social than other social carnivores. While wolves (a very distant cousin of the African wild dog) tend to maintain a distance of at least 15 feet between each other during rest, wild dogs snuggle up right next to each other.
****One more thing you should know: African wild dogs don’t bark. They twitter.
Kreativ Blogger
A few weeks ago, Lori from Green Gigs (a fabulously resourceful, but no longer active green jobs blog) honored us with a Kreativ Blogger award. Being named a Kreativ Blogger is quite an honor, but it comes with a catch: we have to pass the award on to 7 deserving blogs, comment at each blog to notify them of the award and, on top of that, we have to list 7 things we like. Geeesh! Choosing just 7 Kreativ Bloggers was a challenge, but here goes…
Deep Sea News – someone’s gotta write about the weirdness that abounds in the deep sea (did you know male chimeras have a retractable sexual organ on their forehead?) and these guys do a great job!
Malaria, Sea Lice, Bed Bugs and Sunsets – Promoting, in his words, “the vast left-wing conspiracy and queer, godless agenda” this coral reef scientist does a great job of being a champion for the deep.
Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) – She’s a scientist, a naturalist, a freelance writer and, last but not least, a funny person. So of course we like her stuff. She also started the wonderfully awesome Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the Public) blog carnival.
Observations of a Nerd – another scientist with a passion for making science interesting and understandable to the public. Obviously, we’re biased in our adoration of blogs that share our mission, but we don’t see a problem with that.
Lab Rat -We confess that we’re biased towards megafauna here at Mauka to Makai, but that doesn’t mean we don’t care about the little stuff. Lab Rat blogs makes little things—like bacteria that use antibiotics for food—cool.
Ange’s Story -the blog of a down-to-earth world-class triathlete and mother of 3… umm, inspirational would be an understatement
White Hot Truth -inspiration, motivation and a regular reminder that we’re all rockstars. Sure, sometimes it’s a little woo, but some days a hit of woo is just what you need.
And here are 7 things we like. Obviously, there are so many more, but we tried to keep it professional (ish):
-Killer whales
-Great green ideas
-Funny people (as in people who make us laugh, not the movie)
-Food (yes, we believe that food and chocolate each deserve a spot on this list)
-Juvenile trunkfish
Sperm Wars
It may be a dog-eat-dog world* out there, but nowhere is the competition fiercer than in the female reproductive tract.
Biologically speaking, the goal of every male is to produce as many offspring as possible. To do this, males need to have some kick-ass sperm, but according to a recent study, too much kick-ass sperm can cause problems.
Human males, thanks to thousands of years of evolution, now over-produce crazy-fast, majorly-aggressive sperm known as “super-sperm.” One super-sperm reaches the egg first. If another sperm binds to the egg after the winning sperm has lodged itself in the egg, the egg will die. Of course, there’s a defense system to prevent this from happening.
As soon as the winning sperm binds to the egg, a biochemical barrier begins to form around the egg. The barrier is complete in just a few minutes, but (BAM!) another super-sperm enters the egg before the barrier is sealed and the fertilized egg dies.
Over those thousands of years of evolution, women’s bodies have evolved as well. To prevent one overly aggressive second place super-sperm from ruining a perfectly good zygote, the female reproductive tract does everything possible to keep sperm out. To survive the sperm will have to become even super-er.
Human sperm are not the only sperm with a mission. Meadow voles, earthworms, damselflies, field crickets and red junglefowl depend on stellar sperm to win the sperm war. You see, in many species, a fertile female will mate with multiple males. All of the males are shooting for the ultimate prize (paternity), but only one—or in some cases, a few—will win.
Different species have different sperm competition strategies. Some, like chimpanzees and rhesus macaques, produce super-speedy sperm. Others vary the amount and quality of sperm they ejaculate based on the situation. If a meadow vole smells other males nearby, he will contribute more sperm than he would in a more private setting. Field crickets and earthworms give significantly more viable sperm to “experienced” partners than to virgins. And red junglefowl produce higher velocity sperm when they mate with attractive females than when they mate with unattractive females.
Some males—like male black-winged damselflies—play it safe no matter what the girl looks like. During mating, the male black-winged damselfly pumps his scrub brush-like penis up and down to remove 90 to 100 percent of the sperm from the female’s spermatheca (her sperm storage tank). Once he’s done cleaning, he deposits his own sperm.
Alas, males and their speedy my-sperm-is-better-than-your-sperm sperm don’t always get to control who scores paternity. A recent study found that female crickets control how much sperm they store from each of their mates. By storing more sperm from appealing males and less from unappealing (related) males, the female determines a male’s chances of fathering her offspring—no matter how “super” his sperm might be.
*Siblings kill each other, lovers eat their mates and parents eat their offspring, scoring a mate isn’t nearly as easy as it is for humans and making a baby is a downright dangerous proposition.
Hasson, O., & Stone, L. (2009). Male infertility, female fertility and extrapair copulations Biological Reviews, 84 (2), 225-244 DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-185X.2008.00068.x
BRETMAN, A., NEWCOMBE, D., & TREGENZA, T. (2009). Promiscuous females avoid inbreeding by controlling sperm storage Molecular Ecology, 18 (16), 3340-3345 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2009.04301.x
Cool Critter: Sea Cucumber
The ocean is full of fabulously-named critters like slippery dicks and donkey dungs. Of course, fabulous names don’t always match up with fabulously cool critters. Slippery dicks are pretty boring. Donkey dungs are not.
The donkey dung is an aptly-named species of sea cucumber. Sea cucumbers aren’t vegetables.* They’re animals, echinoderms actually (like sea stars and sea urchins) and they breathe out of their butts.
A sea cucumber pulls water in through its anus, removes oxygen from the water using the respiratory trees that branch off its cloaca—which is a hole, kind of—and then expel the water. With all the water flowing in and out of a sea cucumber’s anus, the cloaca (here’s the Wikipedia page) becomes a nutrient-rich hideaway for critters looking for a little extra protection. Pearl fish, some crabs and a few polychaete worms hide in the sea cucumber’s butt until they are big enough to defend themselves in the big bad ocean.
Sea cucumbers don’t hide in anyone’s butt. They have much more creative mechanisms of defense…
All sea cucumbers can change form. A sea cucumber’s body wall is made of a special kind of collagen called “catch collagen” which allows them to stretch and shrink as much as they want to without damaging any tissue. When touched, a sea cucumber may turn itself into a flaccid gooey blob or a tight turd-like glob.
Some species startle their attackers by shooting some of their internal organs out through their anus. Presumably, the sea cucumber’s attacker is so shocked (or disgusted) by this behavior that they abandon any desire to eat such a wretched creature. The sea cucumber, of course, is fine. Its internal organs quickly regenerate and it goes back to doing the things that sea cucumbers do.
Other sea cucumber species attack their attackers using spaghetti-like strings called cuvierian tubules. One end of the tubules is attached to the sea cucumber’s respiratory tree and, when the sea cucumber is chillin’, the other end floats freely in the sea cuke’s body cavity. When the sea cucumber is threatened, the free-floating ends tear a hole through the cloaca and shoot out through the anus. The tubules become sticky when they come in contact with anything so, when they hit the predator, they stick to it, entangle it and eventually immobilize it. The sea cucumber drops the tubules, disconnecting them from its respiratory tree, and goes on its merry way. The tubules grow back in a few weeks. (Some species that discharge cuvierian tubules also discharge a soap-like chemical called holothurin that kills any animal nearby.)
Sea cukes live on—and eat—the ocean floor. Sure, a species that eats dirt and depends on its anus to breathe and protect itself may not sound like a big deal, but it is. Just as earthworms do on land, sea cucumbers** mix the sediment and recycle detritus by eating dead stuff and pooping out the waste, creating fodder for bacteria and enriching the substrate. In other words, these butt-breathers are crucial to the marine ecosystem.
*For the record, a regular cucumber is a fruit, but because of its flavor, it’s recognized as a vegetable in culinary circles.
**Also for the record, sea cucumbers do not eat with their butts. They use their tube feet to put particles in their mouths, which are at the opposite ends of their bodies from their anuses.
Cattle, corn and finishing school
Cows are supposed to eat grass.
Cows can grow big eating nothing but grass because they have rumens—a gastrointestinal adaptation they share with deer and goats, but one that we humans don’t have. The secret to the success of a rumen lies in the host of bacteria, protozoa and fungi that it contains. These microbes are fantastic fermenters, breaking down the cellulose in grass and converting it into fatty acids that the cow can digest. A cow’s rumen is the first of four stomachs, and by far the largest part of its digestive system—the rumen of a fully grown cow can hold up to 50 gallons of material.
Despite the benefit of their own personal and portable fermentery, cows grow pretty slowly on grass. That wouldn’t normally be a problem except that most of the cows in North America are raised for food, and that means we want them to grow quickly. Since it takes three years or more for a cow to reach slaughter weight on a diet of grass alone, the beef industry has worked out a new system where they switch cows from a diet of grass to a diet of grain and corn, at around 10 to 12 months of age. The cows stay on this diet of corn and grain for the next four to six months until they reach slaughter weight—this is called “finishing.” The new diet shaves more than a year off the time it takes for a cow to reach your dinner plate.
Finishing takes place in a feedlot, not in a pasture. Once they start dining on corn and grain, cows don’t “need” open pasture and the grass it provides, so they are shipped to centralized feedlots that can hold upwards of 100,000 cows at one time. Once there, they are kept in pens, closely monitored and fed specific ratios of corn, grain, and other not-entirely-natural dietary supplements (like fats and proteins). Not only does this approach shorten the amount of time it takes to bring a cow up to slaughter weight, but it leaves the meat much more tender and marbled with fat, and therefore of “higher” quality according to the USDA.
The problem with this approach, however, is that cows are not supposed to eat corn. (Remember, cows eat grass.) The chemical balance of a rumen is very delicate and the system can easily get out of whack. When corn enters the rumen, it overwhelms the fermenting process, and coats everything in a slimy layer. (Picture a coral reef covered in slime because it’s located too close to a sewage outflow.) This slime layer coats the fermenting material and can trap the gases produced during the fermentation process. This can prevent the cow from burping,* which can kill the cow unless a tube is inserted down the throat to release the gases.
The unnatural diet also upsets the pH of the rumen, leading to acidosis and ulcers. The acid eats away at the lining of the rumen, allowing bacteria that are supposed to stay in the rumen to leach into the bloodstream and attack the liver. The process is slowed down by pharmaceutical intervention—including the heavy use of antibiotics—but drugs aren’t foolproof. According to industry studies, almost every cow from a feedlot has significant liver abscesses by the time it is slaughtered.
Cows on a corn diet also have more acidic colons. Some of the starch a cow eats doesn’t get fermented in the rumen, ending up in the large intestine. Once there, microbes start up a second fermentation process which has acidic byproducts. While an acidic colon sounds unpleasant enough on its own, it also promotes the growth of a type of E. coli bacteria that is very dangerous to humans.
The E. coli normally found in cow poop can’t survive our stomach acid. (That helps protect us from contaminated meat, not necessarily from putting cow patties on the evening’s menu, just so ya know.) But E. coli O157:H7 (the type most frequently found in acidic cow colons) are acid-tolerant, so in the event that meat gets contaminated with poop from a cow with an acidic colon, the E. coli will survive in our stomachs and wreak havoc on our systems.
So why, pray tell, do we feed our beloved cows an unnatural diet of corn and such that leads to unhealthy cows and potentially lethal meat? Economics. Corn is cheaper than hay, and corn-eating cows grow faster than grass-eating cows. Since consumers like their meat cheap and plentiful, finishing a cow on corn instead of hay is the industry’s answer. Of course, some cows still attend finishing school on grass pastures, so grass-fed beef does exist. You just have to look for it.
* The gases produced by burping cows are, in fact, greenhouse gases. But whether the types of gas vary between corn-fed and grass-fed cows, and which is better for the environment is beyond our current discussion. For more on burping cows check out this post.
Save the Predators, Save the World
Predators—defined by one online source as “someone who attacks in search of booty”—get a bad rap. They’re viewed as bad-ass vermin who could kill or steal a baby at the drop of a hat. No one likes a killer or a baby-stealer, but what if all that killing, baby-stealing (and booty-hunting?) could save endangered species?
Since the 1960s, a 3,000-mile long wire fence has barred dingoes (the alleged baby-stealers) from the southeastern corner of Australia. The fence is supposed to keep the predatory dingoes away from sheep and other livestock on the other side. It’s worked. There’s now a dingo-free section of Australia and a dingo-ed section—and they are two very different areas.
In the dingo-free area, there are lots of mid-level predators like kangaroos and foxes, but not so many small mammals like mice and Tasmanian devils. On the other side of the fence, dingoes eat kangaroos and foxes, keeping the mid-level predators in check and the overall biodiversity much higher.* That’s a good thing—such a good thing, in fact, that scientists predict that 16 of the 19 threatened mammal species living in the dingo-free area would have a better shot at survival if they shared their turf with a few dingoes.
That’s not such a crazy idea, ya know. In the 1930s, gray wolves vanished—were killed off, actually—from Yellowstone National Park. Without wolves, the elk population flourished and became rather sedentary. While they reveled in their freedom from their fiercest winter predator (the wolf), the elk chowed down on young willows, cottonwoods and aspens. The lazy elk did a doozie on the trees, leaving little for willow-dependent critters like beavers to work with. And so, without the wolves to chase the elk, the beavers were screwed.
Now that wolves have returned to Yellowstone, the elk have stopped loitering and the beavers are back in business. (When Yellowstone was wolf-less there was one beaver colony in the park. Now there are nine.) The thriving willows provide habitat for songbirds and fodder for the multitude of beaver dams that now occupy streams throughout the park. Those beaver dams obviously provide habitat for beavers, but they also provide cool waters for fish. Now, just because wolves have put an end to the lolly-gagging elks, Yellowstone offers a plethora of habitat possibilities and a whole lot of biodiversity.
Dingoes and wolves are awesome, but we can’t discount the impact of every young man’s favorite predator, the one who may in fact be “in search of booty”—the cougar. When the National Park Service started developing the area around Zion Canyon in the 1930s, cougars split. Without cougars, mule deer started gobbling up the cottonwoods that lined the streambanks. Those cottonwoods had held the streambanks in place and provided shade for wetland plants, wildflowers, amphibians and butterflies. Now, the streambanks are eroding and the plants and animals that depended on the shady trees are declining. The lesson here is simple: a healthy ecosystem needs to have a few cougars on the prowl.**
*High biodiversity is a good thing. For a refresher on the importance of biodiversity, go here.
**Yes, I did just write that. No, I’m not a cougar.
Ants in your pants?
Being small presents certain challenges.* Small things can only eat small things, and small things are rarely successful at fighting off big things. To overcome these obstacles, many small critters pool their efforts to form colonies. And some of the coolest colonies out there are made up of ants.
The basic structure of any ant colony involves a queen, some males whose sole purpose is to mate with the queen and then die, and sterile, female worker ants that do everything from taking care of the queen and the eggs, to defending the nest and foraging for food.
To keep everything running smoothly, ants communicate with each other through the use of chemical cues called pheromones. Fire ants, for example, have a vocabulary of some 10 to 15 words in the form of chemical cues. Using these cues, ants can lay a path towards food, raise an alarm, signal that they’ve found a new nest site, announce their caste (e.g. queen, soldier, forager, etc.) and even tell their fellow nest mates, “I’m dead.”
Ants are known for their strength, but when a whole lotta ants get together, they can accomplish some truly incredible feats. In the case of army ants, the whole colony migrates every couple of weeks — just enough time for the queen to lay the next round of eggs. If they don’t take over another ant colony’s nest, they build a temporary one out of their own bodies. By locking their bodies together, the ants form walls and corridors that protect the queen and the larvae. The entire nest can reach up to 3 feet wide, and some reportedly hang suspended from tree branches. When army ants forage, they hunt in a swarm, devouring all insects, birds, and other small animals in their path. In fact, army ants are virtually incapable of foraging on their own, and rely on overwhelming their prey with their sheer numbers. The army ants carve up their prey with their massive (for an ant) jaws, and carry the pieces back to the queen and the rest of the colony.
Not all ants are hunters. Some colonies farm… Leaf cutter ants work together to harvest leaves in order to feed the fungus in their underground “gardens.” They don’t eat the leaves, just the fungus. They build complex ventilation systems into their nest to keep the fungus farm at the right temperature, and they even use antibiotics — produced naturally from Streptomyces bacteria cultivated by the ants — to fight off any alien fungi trying to get a foothold in their farms. When a queen leaves to start a new colony, she carries a piece of the fungus with her as a type of “starter” kit.
And some herd…Many ant species (including yellow crazy ants) herd aphids — scale leaf-eating insects that squirt a sugary liquid known as “honeydew” out of their butts. Most aphids squirt this honeydew away from themselves so as to not promote fungi growth, but the aphids “domesticated” by ants will squeeze out a drop on demand whenever an ant strokes the aphid’s abdomen with an antenna. In exchange for this honeydew-on-demand system, the ants protect the aphids from aphid predators like parasitic wasps, flies and certain beetles.
One species of aphid-herding ant, the Argentine ant, has colonized every single continent except Antarctica. Among the biggest of these colonies is a super-colony that stretches 3,700 miles along the Mediterranean coast, and one, nicknamed the California Large, that extends 560 miles along the California coast. Even more incredible, however, is that the California Large, the Mediterranean colony and a super-colony in Japan play nicely together. Ants from different colonies usually fight each other to the death, unless… they are all related. That means that one group of Argentine ants has managed to form a mega-colony on three continents, spanning the world’s two largest oceans. Can world domination be much farther behind?
Perhaps it’s already here. According to some prominent ant experts, there may be as many as 10 quadrillion ants on the planet already. As a comparison, that many ants, all together, weigh about the same as all of humanity put together. Ants have been around for more than 140 million years, and many expect them to live for another 140 million thanks to their ability to form efficient and effective colonies. Perhaps even long after we’re gone.
* In the spirit of full disclosure we must confess that we are both tall, but we are by no means attempting to belittle short people.
