Ants learned to farm fungi during a mass extinction

[fifilura]

I still remember this episode from the 80s when sir David Attenborough climbs into a termite mound up to 6 feet below the surface.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbbLCgh6sso

These termites are fungus farmers and feed the gigantic queen with it.

Unfortunately the fungus farming is not part of this clip, but it is also described the same program.

Edit: This is an older version of sir David Attenborough, revisiting another mound and talking about fungus farming. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGaT0B__2DM

[ohwellhere]

The termites built a heat sink for their colony! That's crazy.

[dr_dshiv]

https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Ants-Story-Scientific-Explora...

EO Wilson’s book on ants is a personal favorite. This also has guides on how to catch and cultivate.

[interludead]

My cousin has an ant farm. The book should be interesting for him.

[abecedarius]

Reminded of this:

> David wondered if, rather than humans going extinct and letting the mushrooms take over, humans could eat the mushrooms and survive. That question led him and Joshua Pearce to research and write Feeding Everyone No Matter What

https://allfed.info/about

[odyssey7]

They may yet learn to farm nutrition from plastic during a different mass extinction.

[interludead]

Such changes could be millions of years in the making

[teeray]

In the case of the zombie ants, the fungus farms the ants

[adolph]

The zombie qualifier might not be needed. The recent book "The Light Eaters" delves slightly into the theoretical frameworks that reverse the causality of agriculture.

What does it mean for ants to "learn?" Did the fungi "teach" them? How did the fungi "learn" to "teach?"

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/196774338-the-light-eate...

[ants_everywhere]

Ants also farm aphids, so they may have beaten us to livestock farming too

[madaxe_again]

They also spelt barley. I’ve watched the sugar ants here with fascination as late every summer they gather vast quantities of barley corns, and then drag them below ground. A few weeks later they eject heaps of husks around the entrances to their nests, and on the one occasion I accidentally dug into one of their nests, it stank like a malthouse.

I can only assume that their purpose is to convert the carbohydrates in the grain into sugars by encouraging the germination process, which they then live off through the winter.

I can’t actually seem to find any documentation of the behaviour, but after seeing them do it for the five years we’ve lived here, I’m under the impression it’s no fluke.

[analog31]

Seeing ants crawling up and down a tree is how I discovered that the tree was infested with aphids.

[animal_spirits]

I learned this fact from watching the documentary "The Queen of trees", quite fascinating! It blew my mind when I first saw it. The documentary is free on YouTube!

[skirge]

ants save them through the winter and then spread them

[gwervc]

New conspiracy theory: ants developed Factorio to train us to their thinking and organization.

[whoitwas]

This is awesome. We could do the same. Those oyster mushroom drones got me thinking. With fungus we could build perpetual motion machines to generate infinite energy or food. Just like the ants.

[whoitwas]

I don't understand the downvotes. There's tech potential with fungus. We can see drones controlled by fungus: https://www.popsci.com/technology/fungus-robot/

If they generate power in response to sunlight, we could organize the drones in a way to generate solar power with a turbine or something similar.

[sumeruchat]

I upvoted :)

[Timwi]

Yet another science piece that perpetuates the misconception that “the mass extinction killed the dinosaurs”. The clade of dinosaurs is not extinct and it bothers me that science writers don't seem to learn this fact and keep getting it wrong.

[sornaensis]

'The extinction of non-Avian Dinosaurs' just doesn't roll off the tongue.

[dartos]

Yet another comment saying someone is wrong with no context or links for the rest of us. :(

[interludead]

The more I learn about ants, the more it seems to me that they are the ones who will take over the world. I'm starting to fear them.

[philipswood]

Earth: Human population: 8.2 billion humans. Ant population: 20 quadrillion ants.

I'm not sure they need to take over the world - it looks like it is already theirs.

[yannis]

Fear the cockroaches they stand a better chance