Leafcutter Ants - the First Agriculture
Posted on November 24th, 2008 in Video
hudson asked:
The amazing story of the Leafcutter Ants - a species of insect that has been employing the technologies of agriculture and antibiotics for approximately 50 million years. Long before man had even figured out how to bang a rock.
This post has 24 comments
November 26th, 2008
The kind who gets paid sweet money.
November 27th, 2008
Seeing the ants in the wild is truly amazing. I’ve seen them in Belize and Roatan.
November 29th, 2008
It from PBS’s fantastic 7-part series, Evolution. You can find more details on the PBS site.
November 30th, 2008
This is one of the most amazing videos about ants I’ve ever seen!!! Where can I find the rest of the video?
December 2nd, 2008
It’s the same guy that does the voice of king Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia.
December 2nd, 2008
what kind of ignorant asshole makes a comment like that?
December 4th, 2008
Fuck it, threesome, yours and mine. I’ll father you a new brother and name him junior.
December 7th, 2008
you already fucked yours, it takes all the fun out of it….
December 10th, 2008
Go fuck your mother!!!!!
December 11th, 2008
ok what nerd looks at ants all day as a job?
(anthius hooker!)
December 12th, 2008
The fire ants could only contend with the leafcutters if they had their own colony behind them.
December 12th, 2008
Actually, the queen doesn’t care about the workers. They are replacable. Like the video says, the queen escapes from a different nest with just a small amount of fungus. She could do it again if they let her go.
December 15th, 2008
call my classmate crazy, but she said those ants are kinda cute.
(please don’t respond to me)
December 17th, 2008
LOL
Man: “opening a nest is a very exciting moment.”
Ants: “To arms! They’re here! Those human scumbags are here! OH MY GOD! THERE ARE TWO OF ‘EM!!”
Queen: “Noooo! I’m being taken away to be tested in some weird, nasty lab! My colony! What of my colony!? It’s over.. My life’s broken :(”
December 17th, 2008
dude, you have an awesome video. i love ants…once when i was younger…i caught one fire ant and i painted him black and returned it to his colony and he lived for a long time…that was in my native country Colombia in South America. in the fron yard we had a huge tree that they ants were using to have their colony and it kept it free of pest and all for exchange of food..it was pretty awesome.
December 18th, 2008
wow… awesome
December 20th, 2008
that sounds like mad fun! i would love to hear more about the research. did anything get published?
December 23rd, 2008
I was doing research on the mutual relationship between the ants and their fungus, which involved a lot of time watching ant behaviour in some large captive nests. Sounds mad but it was great fun!
December 23rd, 2008
and more great info! what lab were you working with the leafcutters? what was the purpose? i’m fascinated.
December 24th, 2008
wow - great story! thanks for sharing!
December 25th, 2008
Excellent video.
December 27th, 2008
Not for long! The ants grab all the extremities and hang on, even if their heads get ripped off, so the ‘enemy’ gets stretched out and held down by dozens of angry ants, while others come along and cut it up like they’re chopping up leaves… Since they can easily chew through leather (I lost two good pairs of Doc Martens while I worked with them) your scorpions wouldn’t last more than 5 minutes!
December 30th, 2008
I wonder if a couple of scorpions could last in that mass.
January 1st, 2009
End of nest.
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