Nobody is perfect. I am Nobody.

<

The structure covers 538 square feet and travels 26 feet into the earth. In it’s construction, the colony moved 40 tons of soil. Billions of ant loads of soil were brought to the surface. Each load weighed four times as much as the worker ant, and in human terms, was carried over 1/2 mile to the surface. It is the equivalent of building the great wall of china. It is truly a wonder of the world…

This is the best segment of a documentary called Ants! Nature’s Secret Power. This film is full of incredible stuff. Here are some notable examples:

* Indonesian ants have domesticated mealy bugs and feed on sugar and vitamin rich honey dew excreted by the mealy bugs. The ants are nomadic, periodically moving their mealy bug herds to new plants for fresh grazing.
* When a colony is disturbed, scout ants spread out looking for a new site. The site is selected by a form of democracy. Individual ants vote by leaving pheromone trails to preferred sites. At the end of voting, the site with the strongest pheromone trail is used.
* Grass cutter ants use relay teams to transport food. Each team covers a set distance and hands it over to the next team.
* Wood ants harvest tree resin to use as an antibiotic and fungicide.
* Grass cutter ants cultivate underground fungus gardens. They build gravity ventilation systems to maintain desired temperature, humidity and CO2 levels.

My favorite part is toward the end. They fill a grass cutter ant hill with concrete. After it dries they excavate the site revealing the underground ant architecture:




This is the best segment of a documentary called Ants! Nature’s Secret Power. The movie was removed from Google Video, but you might be able to download it using bittorrent . I haven’t tried it myself.

Posted under , ,