All language subtitles for David.Attenborough.Micro.Monsters.S01E06.Colony.2160p.NOW.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.265-RAWR_track3_[eng]

Our world is not always the same.

Hidden from our view lies a
different world.

Creatures utterly unlike us...

...almost alien.

Yet they are more numerous than any
other group on the planet.

Welcome to the fascinating world of
the arthropods -

spiders, scorpions and insects.

Today we have new camera techniques
that will allow us

to reveal in greater detail than
ever before their lives -

the way they fight, and feed,
and reproduce.

This series uses specially developed
3D camera technology

to study the micro-world in
extraordinary detail,

both on location, and in specially
constructed environments.

We'll witness their births, the
challenges they face

and the moments when their lives
hang in the balance.

And that may help us understand how
it is that today

over 80% of all animal species
on this planet are arthropods.

In this series, we'll see the way
they have evolved,

from the comparative simplicity of
the millipede,

to vast colonies that contain
hundreds

even millions of individuals.

We'll witness the most extraordinary
transformations

in the animal kingdom.

We'll meet ants that farm, spiders
that can cast their webs...

...and the bug that wears the bodies
of its victims as a disguise.

Welcome to a strange and dangerous
world.

Of all the arthropod adaptations,

the most revolutionary has been the
ability to live in immense colonies.

That enables them to hunt en masse,
to build huge constructions

for a home and to dominate their
surroundings.

Some colonies are quite small.

Others contain as many individuals
as our largest cities.

If great numbers of individuals
are to work together,

they need to be able to communicate,

to pass on information and
instructions.

And doing that enables them
to maintain farms,

to plunder the forest floor like
an invading army,

and to build immense castles.

Honeybee workers are able to send
complex messages to one another.

In the wild, they sometimes nest out
in the open.

But mankind has persuaded them
to live -

and store their honey - in hives

The colony's heart is its queen.

She is just a little bigger than her
subjects - and mother of them all.

In spring, when food stocks are low,

the workers get busy collecting
nectar.

They have a remarkable method of
telling one another

where to find the most productive
flowers.

It is called the Waggle Dance.

This returning bee has just found a
new source of nectar

and is going to tell others in the
hive about it.

First, she gathers an audience.

To do that, she climbs on her
sisters' backs

and vibrates her abdomen.

Now that she's got their
attention,

she begins her dance using a code of
movements

that tell her fellow workers where
her discovery lies.

The duration of her waggle indicates
the distance to the nectar source -

the longer the waggle, the farther
the flower.

And the angle at which she dances
across the comb tells them

the direction to the flower in
relation to the sun.

Her instructions are remarkably
accurate

and can pinpoint the location of a
nectar source

over six kilometres away.

Some of her fellow workers set off
immediately to find it.

In one short season this colony's
workers will visit

up to 500 million flowers and will
make around 90kg of honey.

That is sufficient to sustain the
whole colony through

the coming winter when there is no
nectar to be had.

But dancing can only communicate
with a small number of individuals.

In the forests of Africa there
are communities a thousand times

larger than that.

For much of the time they are
dispersed, ranging through

the forests in dozens of columns
searching for prey.

A driver ant colony may
contain 50 million individuals.

And they're virtually all blind.

Their community has no permanent
home,

just a series of temporary bivouacs.

The horde is coordinated by the
queen.

Unlike her honeybee equivalent,

she is many times larger than her
workers.

Her size enables her to produce
at least 120,000 eggs a day.

She is tended by the workers when in
a bivouac and carried by them

when the time comes to move on.

Soldiers with huge jaws guard
the travelling workers

and attack prey when they find it.

A colony of 50 million needs
a lot of food.

The ants communicate by releasing
and smelling chemicals

called pheromones.

Earlier in the day, a scout found a
good hunting site

and marked out a path to it by
laying a trail of pheromones

on the ground.

The hunters follow the trail,
sensing it with their antennae.

Soldiers guard the flanks of the
rushing column

while the smaller workers who will
butcher

and transport their victims run down
the middle.

Those at the head of the column will
tackle anything

that is too slow to escape.

They have found a slug and released
a different pheromone,

this time into the air, signalling
that they need help.

Workers and soldiers from all over
the area rush in for the kill.

The soldiers' powerful jaws slice
into the slug.

Fragments of it are sent back to the
queen

and workers waiting in the bivouac.

And within minutes, nothing is left
of the slug.

By communication with pheromones
a colony scouring the forest,

can collect hundreds of thousands
of victims in a day.

That is enough to keep the queen and
her millions of subjects well fed.

So she can continue on her own
particular task

of producing enough offspring to
maintain the size of the community.

An organised community of millions
can only work

if individuals within it can
communicate with one another.

Out on the sun-baked floor of the
Rift Valley in East Africa,

daytime temperatures can rise
to 40 degrees or more

and there's little or no shade.

So the termites that live there
make it for themselves.

They build air-conditioned castles.

The queen lives in a special chamber
about a metre below

the surface of the ground.

By her side, a single fertile male -
her king,

the father of the colony.

Her pale fleshy abdomen is
distended with eggs.

Her tiny head dwarfed by her
huge body.

Soldiers guard the royal chamber,
their pincers raised,

ready to tackle intruders.

She is so huge she can't move by
herself

and has to be tended by specialist
workers who continually groom her.

She produces eggs almost
continuously.

Attendant workers take them away as
soon as they arrive.

She can lay thousands a day -
165 million over her 15-year life.

But to produce this prodigious
number,

she needs perfect conditions,
a steady temperature

and a constant supply of
well-oxygenated air.

If she doesn't get that, she will
die - and with her, the colony.

Since she herself can't move,

the workers have to create the
conditions that suit her.

And they've done so by building
an air-conditioning system,

a maze of chimneys and towers that
stand above her chamber.

It can be nine metres tall.

But despite the mound's huge size,

not a single termite lives in it
permanently.

They stay underground.

The sides of the castle are studded
with holes.

Animations show how gusts of wind
move across the savannah.

Hot air blows into these entry
holes.

The ventilation passages within have
many twists

and turns that slow down the air,

and as it slows, beyond the reach of
the sun's rays, it cools.

The fresh air dispersing through the
mound displaces the old stale air.

Outside, it's over 40 degrees
centigrade.

But in the queen's underground
chamber - a comfortable 27.

Working together, these tiny insects
have created

a cool, air-conditioned home.

Something they could
never have done,

working as separate individuals.

In Central and South America
in the rainforests

other immense insect communities
have achieved something

perhaps even more remarkable.

These are Leafcutter ants

and their underground nests are
gigantic.

They can be 30 metres across and
contain eight million individuals.

And they owe their success to
something

they devised long before we did -
agriculture.

Leaf cutters have found a way of
harvesting the vast proliferation

of leaves produced by
the forest trees.

They remove them piece by piece.

But they don't eat them. In fact,
they can't even digest them.

The leaves are fodder for their
underground farms.

Like all complex colonies,

the Leafcutters have a central
organising individual.

Their queen is many times larger
than the workers.

When she founded the colony she
brought with her a tiny piece

of fungus that now grows in gardens
throughout the nest.

As it grows, the fungus produces
little white knob-like structures

which are full of nutrients,
which the ants can digest.

Out in the forest, foragers cut the
leaves into segments

and carry them back to the nest.

They have sharp powerful jaws which
slice through the toughest leaves.

The pieces they cut can be as much
as fifty times

their own body weight.

They can be so heavy that sometimes
only the larger major caste

of the ants can lift them.

Their nest may be up to 120 metres
away - a very long distance

for a porter that is only a
centimetre long.

Here, the smallest caste of ants in
the community, the minims,

are hard at work in the underground
gardens.

They receive the leaves from the
foragers, chew them up

and feed them to the fungus.

They are very fastidious and
constantly check to make sure

that the gardens are kept clean and
properly watered.

They also control the quality of the
leaves sent to them by the workers.

If it suits them,

they release a pheromone which
encourages the workers to cut more.

If they dislike what they are
getting, they release

a different pheromone that stops the
collection of that kind of leaf.

A single colony of some eight
million individuals

can harvest a fifth of the new
leaves grown each year

by the trees in the surrounding
forest.

Millions of closely related
individuals have become

a single, integrated super-organism.

The arthropods are the most
successful animals on the planet.

We already know of over a million
different species

and we are discovering
more every day.

And the reason is quite simple.

They've had over 400 million years
in which to evolve new ways

of feeding and fighting and
collaborating.

And the result is the
dazzling range of species

that we see on Earth today.

Quite simply, the arthropods are the
most successful

kind of animal on this planet.

In this series new technology has
enabled us

to look at arthropods
in a different way...

and reveal how they have adapted
over hundreds of millions of years.

From the simple solitary lifestyle
of the millipede...

...to the vast colonies containing
millions of individuals.

We have traced the fascinating
techniques

they've evolved in order to
survive.

From the gruesome disguise of the
assassin bug...

...to the bombardier beetle's
superheated defences.

We've seen how a wasp can subdue a
cockroach

and turn it into a helpless,
living food source for her young.

Watched the extraordinary mating
dance of the scorpion...

...and the praying mantis that
sacrifices his life

in order to reproduce.

All are the product of the same
simple drives

that underpin all life.

The need to eat.

To survive...

...and to reproduce.

Some care for their young.

Others transform
themselves in order to find a mate.

And some create gigantic communities
that numerically

rival our greatest cities.

And thanks to today's extraordinary
technology,

we're beginning to understand them
better.

We like to think that we share the
planet with the arthropods.

But you could argue that this planet
is more theirs than ours.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

accessibility@bskyb.com