Hi I’m Wendy Zukerman, and you’re listening to Science Vs from Gimlet. On today’s show: we’re doing something a little different -- we’re bringing you a couple stories about one of the most underrated creatures in the animal queendom...

Everytime someone does a survey about people's favourite animals you know who wins?  Tigers^[1].... Dolphins^[2]..  maybe Gorillas^[3] ... but y know who you don’t see these lists. Ants. Yep. Ants. But in the last few years, scientists have documented this rather… unexpected and very cool behavior in ants - that’s making us see these little creatures in a whole new light.

So… on this episode We’ll tell you those stories. These are stories of Survival. Heroism. And of how-on-earth-can-an-ant-do-that-ism. 

The first story comes from us at Science Vs. And second comes from our friends at another Gimlet podcast called Every Little Thing.

And to top it all off… we’ll take you to creature even more curious than ants…Strap in. As we crawl into the ant nest.

Our First Story. Cold Ant Wars.

Just a few weeks ago^[4] a sc-ant-alous paper was published… describing the story of an ant colony that persevered through extreme conditions^[5]  Their incredible ability to survive took scientists by surprise.  

<<Skype call…

Hello!>>

Hello!

This is István Maak - who works at the Museum and Institute of Zoology in Poland ^[6]…  he told us that his ant-venture began when a colleague told him he’d found something curious in an abandoned, underground, nuclear bunker in the forests of western Poland.^[7] [8]

They were living underground in a bunker totally isolated

.. The only way to into this bunker…  is through a little crack in the walls that you can squeeze through^[9]... István is a big guy - so he had to really squish…

Yess, you have to crawl inside

What were you feeling… The very first time you crawled into that hole?

Hehe, I dunno it was a very strange feeling… And I was really enthusiastic and interested in what it will will follow so, I was curious, that's the best word to describe it, curiosity

He crawls through the one meter thick concrete^[10]… and gets inside. It’s pitch black. He’s wearing a head lamp though, so he can see. It looks like an empty warehouse… paint peeling on the walls, water dripping.  He walks down some hallways, deep into the building. And then he sees it. The ground is covered in ants.

It's like wow. It’s a shock that… Wow that they are surviving down there.

The ants had gotten into the bunker through a series of rather unfortunate events. There is a huge colony^[11] of ants outside -  just above the bunker. Hundreds of thousands of worker ants^[12], with hundred of queens. They had picked the wrong real estate to build their home. Turns out, ants had built their colony over an open pipe… that lead into the nuclear bunker… The pipe was essentially a gaping hole in the middle of their colony.  And ants kept falling through it.^[13]

It’s almost constant!  Some fell in my head, on my hands.

And once they got in. They couldn’t get out.

If you were one of the workers, who was trying to do your job and then you fell into the pipe, what would you be thinking?

If I would be an ant  … Oh god! Where am I? What am I doing here? I would go in the corner and die screaming. For us it's a horrible set up, darkness you would lose your mind, and ants don't lose their mind,  

Istvan had heard of these kinds of ants living in some pretty hostile situations… but this was particularly grim.. It is extremely cold down in the bunker and there was basically no food…   Yet the ants had persisted. They were still alive been down there for possibly years...they’d and building a nice little nest. And even keeping it neat, by removing bodies of their fallen comrades  and putting them in little piles, which scientists call cemeteries...^[14].

Yes, There are really really many of them

Is it like a giant pile of dead ants?

Several millions^[15] I think, down there, so it’s not a good vision.

There was a mystery here, though. How were the ants surviving? Cos, there was basically nothing to eat down there…. some bat droppings… maybe a beetle or two that had dropped down the pipe. Well the team found the answer when they took more than 150 dead ants back to the lab^[16]. They examined them carefully… He found legs eaten out.. And holes in their bellies…

They can easily chew out the hole, where they can eat the soft organs and let’s say flesh inside…

Flesh inside?

Yeah

Hm

 How many ants had been eaten like that?-02

Hmm more than 92% were eaten like that

Wow!

And the fact that the ants were making a meal out of their buddies…  made headlines around the world^[17].

They've been stuck in this bunker for years, with no light and not food, How did they survive? OFF EACHOTHER

Worker Ants trapped in a nuclear bunker turned into cannibals

These are radioactive cannibal ants! And they’re coming for us!

But away from these tabloid headlines… what really struck Istvan wasn’t that the ants were eating their friends to survive… it was that they kept trying to make a nest… they were collecting dirt... Building nice little tunnels. But there was no real hope. You see… the ants in the bunker are workers ants -their whole job is to feed their queens and make the colony nice for the babies^[18]. But, down here, in the bunker there weren’t any queens. No babies to feed^[19]. But still.. They kept going is if there were.

Without no hope for any larvae, no goal, they are still keeping their organisation and for me this is I think most exciting…Their..  how to say.. Their will to live! They are doing everything for survival-Maybe they were not feeling hopeless.

And Istvan’s crew ended up rescuing the ants… they put a long piece of wood near that rusty pipe… so ants could escape … Most of them did^[20]. They went back to the nest and just got back to work.

Do you think they knew where they were, when they got home?

I think yes. Cos the nest is like the safe haven.

Our Second Story. Flor-ANTS Nightingale. This comes to us from another Gimlet Show the podcast Every Little Thing.  On this show people…  call in with a question and the team answers it -- a couple weeks ago I called in with my own question -- about an article I had about ants nursing each other back to health: and I was like - what? How do you ants nurse each other?^[21]. Flora Lichtman, the show’s host, looked into it.

FL: Are you ready to go down the ant hole?

WZ: I am.

FL: Are you dying with anticipation?

WZ:  Yes.

FL:  Are you feeling antsy?

WZ: Yes. There are anties in my pantsies.

FL: Let me introduce you to the main ant-raction.

EF: Hi Wendy.

FL: That is Erik.

EF: (05:28) Hello. I'm Erik Frank and I study the behavior of ants^[22]. He’d  studies ants in Cote d'Ivoire.

EF: (06:58) So where you would imagine a lions

FL: (07:02) Zebras, Zebras.

WZ: It’s fine I translated it in my head

FL: but Erik's not interested in these postcard animals. He is focused on ants and one species in particular, the Matabele ants^[23]. They're big about an inch long

WZ: Whoa.

FL: Black. And they sting and they're very particular about their diet.

EF: (07:23) So this is an ant that basically only eat termites. So it's military like species in Africa that hunts termites in large groups of up to 500 or 600 ants^[24].

WZ: (07:37) Whoa. This is going to get game of Thrones Y. Without the sexual violence and I am in.

EF: (08:05)

Yeah. Yeah.

FL: Speaking of game of Thrones, do you want to guess the telltale sign of a Matabele ant colony? Like how you would spot one on the landscape?

WZ: Are they decorative?

FL: you might say that.

EF: So you can find the nest easily by just finding a pile of termite heads,

FL: termite heads

WZ: oooh

FL: around their entrance.

FL: (08:08) And they leave that entrance a few times a day to hunt

EF: (08:21) They go to kill termites and bring them back to the nest to eat them

WZ: I’m just trying to get a visual, you got this massive termite mound and then all these ants going after it?

FL: (08:25) Not exactly.  termite mounds are basically impenetrable fortresses.

EF: (08:28) So attacking them would be futile. But the termites, they also need to eat, so they normally go out of the nest to forage for basically dead wood.

FL: And that’s where the ant-tack happens.

WZ: (08:54) Can I score this by the way?

WZ: (08:56) as you go,

FL: please.

WZ: Scoring

EF: So in the early morning when the sun comes out, the scouts leave the nest searching for for the termites.

Doooooooododood odooo dooo.

WZ: What do you think?

FL: I love it.

WZ: Hahaha

FL: So the ant scouts find the termites then they go back to the nest and rally their army. And then they march to the battleground in a long terrifying column.

EF: (09:31) And at the front of the column is the scout that found the termites, which is basically leading them to the termites.

FL: What does it look like from above

EF: (09:39)

It's basically like a big black snake, like up to two or three meters long.

WZ: (09:43) Whoa.

FL: And when they get to the termite site the scout stops.

EF: (10:30)

and somehow the other ends know to stop as well. And it's probably a chemical signal, but we don't know yet.

So basically all the ants gather, they're all around the scout and then it gives another signal basically to go, we attack now and then all the ants attack altogether over the hunting ground of the termites. Um, yeah, they, they normally have no idea the ant is coming before they attack.

FL: (11:05)

And the ants charge in and the blood bath begins 

EF: (11:14) So they grab the termites and then they think them with the venom and yep that kills them basically.

EF: (11:43) and then you have all the dead termites lying around and for the next four or five minutes, the ants will be collecting the termites and big piles, putting them in their mouth and starting to carry them back to the nest basically

FL: (11:54) your mouth is agape.

WZ: It is agape. I'm really imagining the whole scene, like the Scouts, like that's the pheromones or whatever and they're like, come on, come on ^[25][26]

FL: sisters

WZ: sisters, let's do this. And they're all like, rah rah...that was some of that garble was a termite dying

FL: I could tell it sounded just like it.

WZ: Right?

FL:It's not just the termites who suffer though  War is hell on both sides.

EF: (12:24) Then in every fight they have at least four to six injured ants that are lying on the battleground.

FL: (12:29) a common injury - lost limbs

Oh

And this is when the behavior that you called about kicks in. ants helping ants. Here's how it works. When the ants com e marching in.

[MUX IN] - rubyfruit

EF: (12:40) So the injured ant actually gives out a help call,

FL: (12:43) a chemical signal that says I'm injured, help me. And when their comrades get closer, the injured ant makes a small scene, kind of like the French national soccer team.

EF: (12:54)They will be acting more injured, they will fall over, they will lie on the ground flailing with their legs

FL: (13:00)

and then the healthy ant will come over, pick up the injured ant in its mandibles and then the injured ant stops flailing like tucks its legs in so it's easier to be carried.

EF: (13:10)

And what I discovered was that they carry them back to safety.

[Mux out] - rubyfruit

WZ: (13:14)

That's so nice of them because that just sounds like a pain in the ass. You know, when I was younger and like our family would go on hikes. I am the youngest of four, and I'd be like, dad, I don't want to walk anymore. And he'd say, all right, you want to do injured soldier? but he would literally just like pull me over his shoulder

FL: He was carrying you like a sack of potatoes or an injured soldier.

WZ: Or an injured soldier or an injured ant. I now see

FL: did you tuck your legs in? And stay very still.

WZ: I probably did. Hahaha

FL: Like your dad I suspect, these ants don’t give free rides to everyone either.

EF: (14:07) So actually we have some kind of triage, which basically means they only help ants that are still able to be useful for the colony. If you're too heavily injured, if you lost four or five legs for instance, and the ant itself would actually not call for help and be left behind at the, at the battlefield. And in the ants it's the injured ant itself that decides if it should be rescued or not^[27].^[28] Unconsciously. Of course.

WZ: Wow. So they won't send out a signal if they're like, I'm gone.

EF: Exactly yeah

FL: Erik found that if more than lost more than 3 legs, they didn't send out the signal.

WZ: So what happens next?

FL: This is the most amazing thing. After triage, a tiny worker ant actually comes out carrying a miniature bugle and a small Cote D’ivoir e flag, plays taps, and lays a flag over the wounded ant. And it's really, it's really quite moving.

WZ: That's beautiful. That's really beautiful.

FL: Those are the ants being left for dead but there’s also the ants being...being rescued

WZ: Do they take them back to the ant colony? Do they take them to a little ant doctor?

FL: yes they do

EF: injured ants once they arrived inside the nest were being treated by their nestmates. So other ants would walk towards them, grab the injured leg with their mouth and start licking it and cleaning it.

FL: Did you know that ants have tongues?

WZ: I did not know they had tongues.

EF: Yeah, they have. They have a kind of tongue? Yes.

WZ: In my head when I was imagining it. They have like human tongues.

EF: Yeah. It's a little orangey tongue you could say

WZ: at what point did they ask for the insurance Card? They're like, they lick the wounds and then they're like, if we need to go any further we're going to need to know?

FL: Ant care for all is actually awesome, first of all, No waits.

EF: they treat the wound a lot in the first half hour after injury. And they are removing everything on the wound Similar to how we would clean it. We will put some sterile alcohol maybe or something to clean it and then bandage it up

FL: And the treatment is very effective Erik found that almost all the ants who got the treatment survived and most ones that  didn't get it died^[29].  

Wendy wow^[30]

He suspects the nurse ants are producing some kind of antibiotic in a gland in their body

WE can’t use that antibiotic right?

Erik says maybe down the road there will be applications down the road

Grant funding am i right? 

WZ: Did his To do this experiment he pulled off a bunch of ant legs didn’t he?

FL: He did yeah^[31]

WZ: It's for science. Yeah. For knowledge for this moment right here. How do you feel about that Flora?

FL: I feel like I'm complic-ant.

WZ: HAHAHA.

Do other ants do this or is this special for Cote D’ivoire ants?

FL: That's what I wanted to know too - is this a one off? So, to find out, we called up ant researcher Christina Kwapich^[32]... And here’s what she said And she said yah, they’re the only ones who do this^[33].

CK: (18:20) To perform medical care on another individual and um, have that individual improve in health and then recovered to function again is extremely unusual. I think it may be wholly unique among animals that aren't human

FL: and like a lot of humans can't do it either.

CK: Yeah. I mean, some of us have to go to university for many years to become good nurses.

While Christina says this nursing behaviour is super rare… just a few months ago she published a paper^[34] that described a different kind of ant doing something that was also particularly impressive. She told Flora about these ants that live in the deserts of California^[35] that were risking their own skin to protect their brethren^[36] That’s right. Rescuing them. Ok so. Here’s where it starts. Just as the sun comes up in the deserts these ants go out each morning^[37] collecting food to feed their babies… but often they’re not alone. Spiders are watching them. ANd they’re ready to trap the ants and eat their breakfast.

CK: (20:30)

these little spiders also come out from under rocks and start building their webs along the foraging route that the ants have established.

FL And what Christina saw is that sometimes.. when an ant got stuck in the web Good Samaritants come to the rescue^[38]

CK: They cooperate to pull off the little legs of the spiderweb, the sticky strands sticking to the sand. They pull those up, they tear apart the web. The spider usually runs away at this point and then the ant, which is ensnared in the sticky silk is taken out and carried back home to the nest where the silk is removed.

FL: So the ants aren’t just detangling their sisters, they’re also dismantling the web.

WZ: ohhh

FL: that’s really rare

CK: so mostly animals run from traps or they avoid them. Um, but in this case, the ants face the trap head on.

WZ: That is amazing! Cause is that dangerous for them? Like do some of them get eaten by the spider?

FL: Yeah. And every now and then the rescuers do get killed…

WZ: So Whhhhhyyyy??? Would they do that?

FL: (22:28)

This is the whole thing about being in a colony. Your livelihood is connected to the livelihood of the colony and the analogy that people make is that ants are like cells in a body.

WZ: Yeah

FL: That the survival of the body is more important than the survival of any one cell

WZ: What do you think of that?

FL: I think these stories are really confusing. The idea that these ultra complex altruistic social interactions are coming from these tiny brained insects

WZ: Right?

FL: I don’t know what to make of that

FL: So I asked Christina… I mean, does this research suggest that ants are? Empathetic ?that they see their nest mates and feel like they want to  help them?

CK: I don't think it is suggested. Um, ants are empathetic. You can measure things like that in animals by looking at facial expressions. For instance, expressions of pain. When an individual sees another, an animal experiencing pain, amps have very blank faces. Um, so we can't ask that question of them

WZ: No, no we can’t ask ants why do what they do… or even look at their faces to try guess… But after the break…we’ll visit a creature that doesn’t even have a face… and yet it makes an even bigger sacrifice…

BREAK: AMOEBA BEAT:

Welcome back… We’ve just heard stories of ants fighting for their survival… and even risking their own lives to protect their friends. It’s not behaviour you think of… when you look at an ant ambling across your kitchen counter in search of crumbs.  

SO what’s driving them to do this -- to help us understand we need to go to a creature smaller than an ant... with even less brain power… we went to a lab in Manhattan to meet this biology professor

DB my name is derrick brazill I'm a professor at Hunter College^[39]

To show us what these creatures look like, Derrick went to a drawer and pulled out a little plastic dish, and put it on a microscope.

<<SFX: plate on microscope>>

DB yeah so this plate is pretty full of cells.

MH oh yeah, little blobs

DB mmhmm

That’s Meryl Horn, a producer on our show looking down the microscope. So in the microscope we can see lots of individual, clear, round cells with little speckles on them, floating in a liquid. We’re looking at a slime mould, it’s an amoeba,  they kinda just look like little drops of dirty water  

MH where does it normally live in the wild?

DB it lives in temperate soil^[40]

MH so if they were in the wild, let’s say I’m one of those individual amoeba. What am I doing, what am I thinking?

DB you're thinking where can I get my next food- so they eat bacteria and fungi that live in the soil.^[41]

MH Can you point out where the brain is?

DB no there is no brain.

Yeah. No brain. Just a little cell. But the thing…the behaviour..  we’ve come to see kicks in when these cells get really hungry.^[42][43] 

DB so the cells are able to talk to each other. They send out this chemical and that tells the other cells I’m here, I’m starving, come towards me.

So, they pick up this signal “I’m starving” “I’m  starving”...  and they all come together^[44]

^[45][46]… and form this entirely new… and weird shape^[47][48][49] Derrick pulls out a petri dish to show it to us…

*Click *

MH Whoa- 

These amoebas… now looked like big ball on top of a stalk.

DB They look to me like lollipops

MH yeah you know you can’t even tell it’s made of individual cells, it just looks like one big lollipop

DB yeah, exactly, yeah

So why are they doing this? Why are they forming this lollipop? Well… what scientists think is happening is that they are grouping together like this so the ones in the ball are more likely to get, say, blown around by the wind^{[50][51][52][53]} - blown to a place where their babies might find more food^[54]

DB I think of it like a dandelion, where the seeds are a puff at the top. So if the wind comes along and blows the seeds away. And if the seeds were stuck at the bottom, the wind wouldn’t blow them very far.  

While this is all great news for the amoeba on the top of the lollipop… they’ll get a feast in their new home.

MH but then what about the ones in the stalk?

DB Ones in the stalk they die,

That’s right. The amoebas that turn them into the stalk. They die.^[55][56] Now some amoebas cheat the system to make it more likely they’ll end up on top.^[57]

DB what the cheaters do is convince others to become stalks

MH like whisper in the ear? “Stalks are doing great work out there”

DB whisper be a stalk, those whispers being little chemical signals they send around saying  “be a stalk .. be a stalk”

But the thing is… a lot of them don't cheat. Probably because if too many are cheaters, it spells disaster

DB if they all cheat, and they’re all trying to get into the spore, then you have a spore mass that’s not lifted on the ground, and then no one survives. So you’re going to have some cells that follow the rules. Otherwise if everyone cheats, no one wins.

MH how would you feel if you were in the stalk?

DB I’d be dead. I'd feel I did a good job that my brothers and sisters will go on to live a nice healthy, long life,

MH very kind but they're also suckers right?

DB they have sacrificed themselves for the greater good, 

So the amoebas.. These no brained little cells…  they die for their sisters… And the fact that amoebas do this… sacrifice themselves… so the other amoebas can get food! And live!  Tells Derrick one thing. And it’s not that amoebas have empathy… or are really thinking hard about this decision. But rather it all comes back to those ants - risking it all. And fighting for survival. But it’s not your survival. It’s the survival of your colony.^[58] 

DB Like how worker ants don’t reproduce, but help support to the queen. They’re helping pass along their genetic material even though they’re not reproducing. It’s the same thing as the cells that form the stalk. They’re genetically similar to the ones that form the spore, so by sacrificing themselves, they’re allowing for their genetic material to go on.

Yknow.. It’s not empathy. It’s evolution.

That’s Science Vs.

Next week healthcare: Can Medicare for all really fix sick America?

<<A whole display of hospital beds and nurses… >>

And if you have got to check out Every Little Thing! Some episodes that the team reckon you’ll love are “Fruit Flies: Seriously, Where Do They Come From?”;  F-ck Yeah: Can Cursing Make You Stronger? And Twinspiracies: The Truth About Twinspeak and More. That’s Every. Little. Thing.

And while we are sharing the podcast love - a friend of the show, Rose Reid - you heard her in Big Foot and Online Dating. Well she has just started a brand new show - it’s called The Women. The Women. There’s a great interview with the Doctor that exposed lead poisoning in Flint. Check it out. The women.

CREDITS

Science Vs is produced by me, Wendy Zukerman along with Meryl Horn, Rose Rimler, Michelle Dang, and Lexi Krupp.  Every Little Thing’s piece was produced by Gabby Bulgarelli, Emily Forman, Phoebe Flanigan, Annette Heist and Flora Lichtman. This episode was edited by Caitlin Kenney and Jorge Just. Fact checking by Diane Kelly. Mix and sound design by Peter Leonard and Dara Hirsch. Music written by Dara Hirsch, Dan Brunelle, Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, Bobby Lord and erm, me. A big thanks to Dr. Nathalie Stroeymeyt, Dr. Gema Trigos-Peral, Dr Jack Neff, and recording help from Wojciech Oleksiak. And special thanks to the Zukerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson.