The "great wisdom" of ants They created their own "agricultural civilization" 50 million years ago

They are the most numerous creatures on earth. The total weight exceeds that of humans; they are the "souls" of evolution. They created their own "agricultural civilization" as early as 50 million years ago; they have two stomachs. One digests food for themselves, the other stores food for the collective; they are stoic, industrious and fearless, and they put the interests of the people above their own lives; however, they are the most insignificant beings in nature, and that is the ants.

Ants are the most numerous animals on earth, and insects have the most brain cells. The brain is made up of about 250,000 cells. Through long-term observation and research on ant colonies, scientists have found that ants can easily solve the thorny problems of modern human society. For example, the problem of traffic congestion, as the dominance of the human planet, is helpless. It is very important to learn survival wisdom from ant friends. Every individual is the most effective source of information

If you're in a traffic jam, do you tell oncoming traffic about the traffic jam when you turn around and look for another way out? You may not, but ants can. They not only disseminate information in a timely manner, but also act as guides when necessary, which is the most effective way to solve the problem of traffic congestion.

German intelligence expert Dr. Dirk Gerbing published the research progress and latest results of ant colony intelligence. Gabbin believed that ants were highly social creatures. They see it as their duty to deliver information that is of interest to the people, that is innate and genetically integrated, not acquired.

Gabbin's team placed a mixture of sugar and honey near the nest, then laid two special channels of different widths between the nest and the food. The sweetness quickly attracted many ants to carry the food, and the narrow passage quickly became crowded. However, after a period of time, the congestion was relieved, and most of the new ants chose a slightly wider channel, showing a busy scene of making full use of the outlets.

The researchers observed that if an ant had just returned from a crowded passage and encountered another companion who was about to leave, it would promptly notify the companion that the road was blocked, and sometimes actively guide the latecomer to a spacious road. Inspired by this, the scientists later built a more sophisticated computer model to simulate the different lengths and widths of ants' road networks. It turns out that ants can still move food quickly and efficiently, even though changing routes may take longer.

So in the primeval forest, hundreds of thousands or even millions of ants travel along their own transport routes, always in order. The reason is that every ant knows the conditions of the road.

How to efficiently allocate limited resources through discrete and separate decisions remains an open question for many networked systems. Road traffic order is one of the most challenging issues. Ants, however, can easily solve this problem by sharing information among colony members. Therefore, Dirk Gebbin suggests that the best way to curb traffic congestion is for traffic participants to establish information communication and exchange like ants. If all the vehicles lucky enough to avoid the traffic jam can timely inform oncoming vehicles of possible traffic difficulties, then everyone can take timely measures to avoid further deterioration of the traffic situation.

To be sure, in the early days of road congestion, timely information transfer among traffic participants is more effective than late arrival of the police.

The mainstream view holds that human agricultural civilization emerged from a slave society more than 10,000 years ago. Humans learned to plant and feed through the germination of fallen seeds, growth, and reproduction of prey. But who would have thought that the little ants began their attempts at agricultural civilization 50 million years ago, when human ancestors might still be playing in the sea. They can not only "grow" but also "fertilize", "weed" and secrete antibiotics to control pests and diseases.

Agriculture is extremely rare in the animal kingdom. At present, there are only four animal groups with agricultural level on the earth: ants, termites, bark beetles and humans. Do not misunderstand. To say that ants are the founders of agricultural civilization does not mean that they can carry hoes to farm like humans. They gather rotting leaves from the forest to cultivate their favorite edible fungi.

In early 2019, American entomologist Ted Schultz published the discovery. Through DNA sequencing, scientists can create ant "evolutionary trees" to breed fungi, unraveling the mysteries of the ancestors of ants that pioneered the "agricultural model" some 50 million years ago. Today, South American leafcutter ants are still repeating the ancient work of their ancestors. They keep bringing rotten leaves into their nests - they don't eat them - but use them to grow fungi for their own food. The ant's "crop" is a mushroom-like fungus that grows in the ant's nest. Scientists have discovered 553 species of fungi grown by ants.

Just like humans grow crops, ants also know how to fertilize. Fertilizer is their own excrement. They also know about "weeding," that is, regularly picking and removing spores from other wild fungi that compete with fungal crops for nutrients. The most amazing thing is that their bodies secrete a special antibiotic that has a wonderful dual function - it acts as a "pesticide", inhibiting the growth of harmful wild bacteria; it also kills the Parasites that sicken crops, ensuring that the population's food source is not affected.

Through genetic analysis and special markers of the ants, scientists have identified nearly 200 different species of "fungal ants" that rely on different fungal mushrooms as their sole food source. This is similar to the farming situation in later human societies.

Intriguing scientists, ants have been secreting antibiotics for tens of millions of years, and they can still kill some fungal pests. Why don't pests have apparent resistance evolution? Unlike people who have been using antibiotics for only a few decades, they are often resisted by resistance and have to repeatedly change the properties of antibiotics. Once the mystery is solved, it will bring great changes to the research and development of human antibiotics.

An unknown sophisticated society

Each group is a well-structured, smooth biological society. It is the basis for the prosperity of the ant tribe era, and the basis for workers to have a clear division of labor and to be loyal to their duties. As the colony continued to expand, its size, division of labor, and types of laborers changed. Young workers start at the bottom of the ant nest, like apprentices just entering the factory. At first, they are responsible for the life and life of the larvae and queen: as they grow up, they take on larger and more important tasks and are responsible for maintaining the nest, preparing food and storing seeds; the responsibility of the descendants is to guard the nest , collect garbage, and finally go out to forage, and undertake the arduous task of raising the nation. No matter what position they are in, the ants will do their duty and be loyal to their duties, instead of losing their lives without negligence.

What directly puzzles biologists is who assigns the task changes of worker ants?

It turns out that all this is determined by the worker's own biological clock. They do not rely on instructions from their leaders, nor do they have an oversight body, and are completely conscious behaviors. The study found that ants could not only perform different tasks based on age, but also clearly estimate their remaining lifespan.

Polish biologist David Pollan and his team tracked a colony and found that workers foraging in the farthest, most dangerous places from the nest were older, and some were even sluggish for several years. Many of these worker ants actually struggle to get back to their nests. More than half of them were eaten by anteaters or died of exhaustion.

This is because ants know how much oil is in the bowl of their life. They are a last-ditch effort to make a final contribution at all costs. From the interests of the whole group, the risky behavior of the old worker ants is the most cost-effective. In this way, young workers with strong vitality can maintain their physical strength and will not affect future reproduction.

Perron conducted an experiment to prove that the ants' spirit of selfless devotion is etched in their blood. They keep pumping carbon dioxide into a house with a dense nest, and when the concentration reaches a level high enough to destroy the life of the ants, the old workers rush out to find food. Once the carbon dioxide levels normalize, they end their journey, either back to the nest, or near the nest.

This altruistic spirit of ants makes all beings bigger and stronger than them, making them feel inferior.

Of course, in order to survive in a very harsh environment, ants will also take cruel and even enslaving methods to other creatures, but the seemingly despicable and cruel methods have branded them with the wisdom of ants.

Live in harmony with your own food

It's no coincidence, of course, that ants and aphids always live together because a type of dew secreted by aphids is their favorite food. But in order to be good neighbors with aphids and enjoy a delicious meal for as long as possible, the ants make a huge effort. They live in harmony with aphids by relying on secreted chemicals to stabilize and suppress aphid populations.

At first, scientists speculated that the ants would bite off the wings of the aphids to stop them from flying away, thereby obtaining the food they excrete. But in fact, it's not. Chemicals secreted by ants were observed to inhibit the growth of aphid wings. In addition, where the ants climb, they leave behind a special chemical that creates a pleasant attachment to the aphids, making them quiet and willing to be their neighbors.

Elf ants also control aphid populations based on aphid numbers and food intake. When aphids are scarce, ants do their best to create a good environment for them. If necessary, they help the aphids eat their natural enemies, such as squid bones. When there are too many aphids, they eat some of the aphids to keep the population healthy. Therefore, some scientists sigh: ants are just using their own wisdom to feed their food.

"Ant-Man" Faye's Harvest

Brian Fay is an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences. He is the head of the "Ant Online" database project. He has studied ants for nearly 30 years and has a close relationship with ants. He was called "Ant-Man" Faye. For more than 20 years, he has been exploring ants in Africa and Madagascar. As a result, he contracted almost all tropical diseases and experienced countless risks. Of course, he also had the joy of discovery and success. In Madagascar alone, he discovered more than 800 unknown new ants.

One of the most interesting and controversial ants Feyer has discovered is the vampire ant. The blood-sucking ants were first spotted in Madagascar 14 years ago, and seven years later, Faye discovered the entire colony. This orange ant is notorious for its unique feeding method. When the worker ants are hungry, they go to the larvae room in the hole, drill holes in the larvae, absorb the nutrients from bodily fluids, and then regurgitate the nutrients for the resting queen. But it doesn't kill the larvae, and the operation doesn't kill the larvae, which grow up with scars.

Blood-sucking ants are the only ants that directly connect the hind stomach and midthorax. Other ants, on the other hand, have elongated, constricted sections between their stomachs and thoraxes. These slender body segments give them greater flexibility and can easily escape enemy prey in tight spaces. The abdominal structure of blood-sucking ants is nearly identical to wasps, which strongly suggests that this ant evolved from wasps around 70-80 million years ago. Due to Madagascar's unique geographic location, the world ant community believes that blood-sucking ants are the missing link in ant evolution.

Some people have asked many times, why take such a big risk and overcome so many difficulties to study such a small thing as an ant? He would not hesitate to say that while ants are the most abundant and widespread species on Earth, we know very little about them. Their wisdom and the meticulous and harmonious social formation they formed must be admired by all advanced beings, including human beings. We can learn to fly from birds, and we can learn to see far from dragonflies. Why can't we learn some wisdom from ants?

Brian Fay has written advice to international environmental agencies and leading animal protection NGOs. In environmental protection projects such as tropical rain forests, we must not only pay attention to large animals, but also consider the protection of ant populations, especially in areas such as Madagascar where ant species are abundant but cannot be effectively protected. Hundreds of species of ants go extinct every year.

Without ants, not only will the biodiversity of the earth lose its vitality, but it will also make us lose the wisdom spirit of humbly asking for advice.