All language subtitles for Planet Ant Life Inside the Colony BBC 720p HDTV EN Sub_Subtitles01.ENG

'We are about to embark
on an ambitious project.

'Something that's never been
tried before.

'It will show us a hidden world.'

I'm standing in the middle
of something

that you would never normally see.

It's taken six months
from planning to this.

A new home for one million

of nature's most extraordinary
creatures.

Ants.

'They fascinate us. They build
complex, organised societies.

'And we've always drawn parallels
between the world and ours.'

It's basically an ant
production line.

'So what can we learn from ants?'

One ant in two million,
and we found her. Fantastic.

To find out, we've brought a working
colony of leafcutter ants

from the tropics of Central America.

We've recreated their nest
so that we can see inside.

And for one month, we're going to
capture every aspect of their lives.

'We'll track them.'

This is going to be great,
because this is going to tell us

what these soldiers
are doing in the ground.

'We'll listen to them.'

That little chirp?

Yeah.

'And get right up close to them.'

One's gone down my front!

'We'll go beyond our own
ant metropolis

'to meet some of the most impressive
ants on the planet.'

It's not just a group of ants
holding on to each other,

it's a survival raft.

It is. It's a force to be
reckoned with.

'And discover the surprising
ways in which ants

'are helping us
solve global problems.

'I'm an entomologist, and even to me,

'what ants can achieve
is astonishing.'

'Our project will show their world as
it's never been seen before,

'and reveal what they can teach
us about ourselves.'

Glasgow. Not the natural
home for leafcutter ants.

But over four weeks,

the Science Centre here will play
host to our ambitious project.

Our goal, to unlock
the secrets of the ant colony.

Well, the stage is now
set for our remarkable experiment.

It's hot and humid in here,

and everything you see here
is based on real-life.

Well, this is normally all you'd
see of a leafcutter ant colony,

the bit above ground - ants taking
bits of leaf underground.

Now, like an iceberg, the main event
isn't the bit you can see,

it's what's happening beneath,
and that's a part of the ant colony

that even scientists like me
rarely ever see.

In the wild, the leafcutters dig
huge underground nests.

We've used their natural design
to inspire our own creation.

Down below here, underground,

we've tried to recreate what an
ant colony would look like.

These boxes represent chambers in the
soil, and the walkways are tunnels

in the soil by which the ants can
access all parts of the colony.

'But the leafcutters need more than
just a nest. They also need to feed.'

'We've built them a whole environment
where they'll be able to search

'or forage for food as they
would do in the wild.'

We've got plants in certain areas
joined up to a main foraging area

with these rope walkways.

Now, in the real world,
in the natural habitat,

these would be creepers
and other plans.

Now, as you can see, there are no
ants on it yet, but there will be.

In a short while,
we'll let the ants loose

over this whole new world
we've built for them.

And over the next month, I'm going to
be really interested to see

how they take control of it
and how the colony develops.

'Joining me is Professor Adam Hart

'from the University of
Gloucestershire.

'He's studied the leafcutters
for over 15 years.

'He's helped design a series
of experiments

'to uncover how the colony works.

'And the first thing he's going
to do

'is help us see inside
one of the boxes.'

Adam,
what's happening inside the box?

Hundreds of ants are attacking
this camera!

Let's just try
and wiggle it around a bit.

Now that box is absolutely
swarming with ants,

and they don't seem terribly happy
with your camera in there.

No.

'This is my first glimpse into the
hidden world of our ant nest.

'In the wild, this would be an
underground chamber,

'excavated by the ants themselves.

'And inside here is something
vital to the colony.'

This grey material here
is fungus, in fact,

which they're farming
inside the nests.

They're using those leaves that they
cut to help them grow this fungus.

'Leafcutter ants, despite their name,
don't eat leaves.

'They bring them into the nest
as a food supply for this fungus,

'and it's the fungus that they eat.

'Our ants are farmers,
and the fungus is their crop.'

This means I can see
right into the nest,

I can see the fine details of
their normally hidden lives.

This is just incredible.

'In among the fungus, the white,

'translucent shapes you can
see are the brood.

'That's the young of the colony,
the eggs, larvae and pupae.'

'Here we can see the adults
attacking the camera,

'whilst in the background, the brood
is whisked away to safety.

'All that brood, every single egg,
is laid by one ant - the queen.

'She's hidden somewhere deep
within the nest,

'and hopefully we'll be able
to track her down later.

'Right now, I want to open up this
box and get my hands on some ants.'

Let me just get a bit out. I'll try
and avoid getting a big soldier.

Try and avoid a soldier, yeah,
I wouldn't like that very much.

'The soldiers, as the name suggests,
are ants who protect the nest.

'They're big, and they bite.'

I haven't managed to avoid
a soldier.

Haven't you? Oh, thanks.
Oh, it just bit me! Thank you.

There's a big one there.
Yeah, a big one.

One of them has just bitten my hand.
Ah!

Wow.

There is a massive soldier -

ow! - who has just found
a crease in my skin,

has sunk her jaws right into my skin,
that's actually quite painful.

Yeah.

Now, you can see why the soldiers are
so good at defending the colony.

Adam, I think I've had
enough of holding this.

Shall we put it back?

Yes, if you could scoop that out.

'The soldiers are just one kind of
ant in our leafcutter colony.'

Now, the first thing that is really
obvious when you look at an ant

colony is that the adult ants
seem to be of different sizes.

Now, it's not
because they're not fully grown,

it's because they are different
castes of ants,

and under here I've got three
different castes of worker ant.

'In the insect world, a caste system
means that individuals

'differ in shape and size
within a single species.'

So you can see the range of size
from the very, very small workers,

to the middle-sized workers,
and the very large workers here.

And they're different sizes
for a good reason.

Each of these castes of ants
have a different job to do.

'I've already had a painful encounter
with one of these, a soldier.

'That head isn't filled
with a large brain,

'rather a massive set of muscles
to power a fearsome pair of jaws,

'or mandibles, strong enough
to cut through my skin.

'Going down the size scale,

'this smaller ant is called
a media worker.

'These are the hands that collect
and bring leaves back to the nest.

'It's serrated jaws are
just the right shape

'for cutting into tough
plant material.

'At the very bottom
of the scale are the minima,

'the most numerous ants of all.

'These tiny nest mates effectively
turn the leaves into fungus

'and tend to the brood.

'So the first thing we learn from
our colony is that the labour

'is divided between all its members.

'Each caste of ant
has a role to play.

'To allow us to investigate how
all these different castes

'organise themselves
and work together,

'we needed a supply of ants
on an epic scale.

'Not just a handful
bred in a laboratory,

'but a thriving, working colony
from the wild.

'And Adam was giving the job
of tracking one down.'

'I've come to Trinidad,
just off the coast of Venezuela,

'and I'm on my way to a colony
of leafcutter ants

'that sounds perfect
for our project.'

Leafcutters are native here,

and they're considered a
serious agricultural pest.

The colony we found was about to be
destroyed by a farmer.

We want to rescue it
and take it back to the UK.

'But digging up a nest of this scale
won't be an easy task.'

They're huge.

There's tens of thousands of very
aggressive soldiers

that will come out and bite you,

but we're going to have to do it
almost surgically when we begin,

because we really need to make sure
that we don't kill that queen.

The queen is the absolute critical
thing in this colony.

We can get away with not bringing
all the ants back,

but if we don't have the Queen
intact, then we're stuck.

'Waiting at the nest site
is Andrew Stevenson.'

All right, Andy?
All right?

How's it going, good to see you.

This is the nest?

What do you think?

'Digging up ants is
Andy's speciality.

'He provides leafcutter
colonies to zoos, museums

'and universities
all across Europe.'

I don't think it's too big
for digging,

but what we're going to do is
we're going to start at the bottom

with a trench, and then take
sections as we go back through the

bank, hopefully showing a lot of the
architecture of the nest as we go.

'At the moment, the only sign
the leafcutters are even here

'is this loose pile of earth
produced by the ants

'as they dig out their
underground nest.

'This is because in the wild,

'our species of leafcutter
tends to be nocturnal.'

'So to get a sense of how big
the nest really is,

'we have to wait for night to fall.'

So here are leafcutters
on the trail,

and you can really get a feel
for their destructive power.

This is a fruit tree,

and the leaves are just
pouring down out of the tree.

All of these fragments have been
cut up, they're in the canopy,

and there are hundreds of ants
passing every minute.

Just conveying, like a conveyor belt
of leaves from the top of the tree,

all the way to the colony, which is
about 100 metres away up the hill.

'It's easy to see why farmers are
no friends of leafcutters.

'From the huge numbers of ants
in the soil here,

'we reckon this colony is at
least a million strong,

'so it's certainly on the scale
that we need for the project.

'And so many ants means a large,
subterranean nest.

'So to get a sense of how big a job
we'll face on the dig tomorrow...'

Adam, over here, we've got one.

'..Andy and I are placing lights
at each nest entrance we find.'

'This should show us roughly how big
the nest is beneath our feet.'

What we've done is marked out what
turned out to be

more or less a circle of lights.

It seems to show that most
of the activity in this colony

is focused on the bank here,

where we're going to start
doing our sectioning in the morning.

It's good news, because it means
that once we get stuck into

that central part of the bank right
in the middle of the lights,

we should start hitting fungus
chambers quite quickly,

and with any luck, fingers crossed,
we might even get the queen.

'It's the day of the dig,

'and time to see what the colony
looks like underground.

'But the ants aren't about to
take our intrusion lightly.'

This is pretty much the first
blow of the spade,

we've been digging for about a
minute, and already,

on the surface here, I can count

at least 20 or 30
of these big soldiers.

It's made our life a bit
more difficult, in a way,

because we're now going to be under
attack digging this trench.

'Undeterred by the threat
of the soldiers,

'Andy and his team continue
with the dig.'

Let's start
taking about a foot at a time.

We'll start taking a slice
and we'll work our way back.

'Before long,
we've pushed back into the nest.

'What we see is a maze of chambers,
connected by a system of tunnels.

'This natural architecture
is what we've tried to

'recreate in building
our own ant nest,

'with glass boxes and tubes
replacing the chambers and tunnels.

'By mimicking a real-world design,

'we hope to encourage the ants
to behave as they do in the wild.

'And it's not just the ants
we need to rescue from this nest.

'The underground chambers are
packed full of vital fungus.

'We need to collect as much of
this fungus as we can.'

'Without it, the ants
will quickly die.'

We've got into quite a good rhythm,
now, really.

There's lots and lots of these
fungus chambers

going back into the bank.

Every time you put the spade in
and pull some soil off

it exposes some more,

so it's really just a case
of methodically going through them,

when they fall out,
or when you pull them out,

and making sure the queen's not
there, so just keep cutting back,

keep cutting back,
trying to find that queen.

'At the end of day one, we've
recovered thousands of ants

'and a large quantity of fungus,

'but we've still to recover
the most vital ant of all.'

No, she's not here.

'The queen.

'Failure to find her means
failure of the entire project.

'Day two, and the hunt
for the queen continues.

'We're searching for something
quite distinctive.'

The queen is huge compared
to other ants,

and she'll be covered in
smaller ants, who tend her.

There's something really smart here.

Oh, yeah?

OK.

Yeah, yeah.

'This could be our needle
in a haystack.'

This looks very promising.

So this could be
the queen in the middle.

I think we're in, here.

Yes.

There she is. The queen, excellent.

One ant in two million,
and we've found her.

'Through tons of earth,

'we managed to find the most
important ant of all.

'It's a great relief
to the whole team,

'and it means our project
can go ahead.'

So this is what we've been
seeking in all our mining.

This is the queen of the colony,

and I'm going to very
carefully pick her up.

She is surrounded by a attendant
workers who are biting me now - ow!

But she's in there.

That's the egg-laying machine
that's at the heart of this colony.

And there she is,
ready to go on her...

We're going to stick her onto
a really nice use of fresh fungus,

very carefully, very gingerly,
just plonk her on the top, there.

And that's..?

That's us.

That's us done. Good job.

'The race against time begins now.'

'We need to get the ants from here
to the UK as quickly as possible.

'After two flights and a
transatlantic journey

'of more than 4,000 miles,

'the ants arrive at their
final destination,

'the Glasgow Science Centre,
where their new home awaits.

'We put the ants and some fresh soil
onto the top of the nest.

'This is our ground level.

'From here, they make their way
down into the nest boxes,

'like the chambers
we saw in the wild.

'And it's with some relief that
we come across an old friend,

'the queen.'

Excellent.

'With the survival of the queen
confirmed...'

Yep, she's in.
OK.

'..and the ants exploring
their new nest,

'the signs are good that our colony
has survived the journey.

'Now we're hoping that
they'll take over

'and complete the building
of their new world.'

'We've given our ants time to
settle into the main nest area.

'Now we're ready
to let them loose

'on the wider world
we've built for them.

'It's our first chance
to see how they organise

'the great collective endeavour
they're famous for.

'Leaf cutting.'

What we want to do now is to allow
them to forage in a natural way,

they would do in the real
environment, and to do that,

we need to join up the colony with
the virgin foraging lands beyond.

'For the ants,
it's finally time to explore.'

Well, we've only just put the bridge
in, and already we've got workers

swarming up as far as here, so I
don't think it will take very long

for them to find the other end
of this bridge.

'Tentatively, the ants start to
make their way down the bridge,

'although it's not exactly
a massive trail yet.'

In the wild, you see them
foraging all over the ground,

but how far will they forage
from the main nest?

Up to 100 metres, sometimes more,
so you can follow these trails

deep into the forest, and in fact,
this colony was foraging deep into

a citrus grove, and you could follow
them back for 100 metres or more.

'Our time-lapse cameras reveal that
the trickle quickly becomes a flood.

'More and more ants head out to
explore the foraging areas beyond.

'Now we'll have to wait to see how
quickly they discover the plants

'and get their leaf-cutting
operation under way.

'But there's one caste of ant
we'll hardly ever see out here,

'and that's the soldiers.

'Unless they're responding
to a threat,

'they tend to stay hidden deep
within the nest.'

But we won't get a full picture
of how our colony works

unless we can discover what these
mysterious ants are doing.

So to find out,
we've turned to technology.

'We're going to use radio
tracking devices

'to follow individual soldiers
24 hours a day.

'Joining us to help is Clare Asher

'from the Zoological Society
of London.'

So, what we're going to do is we're
going to glue some radio frequency

tags onto their back, and Claire
here is quite an expert at this.

I'm keeping well out of it,
because I'm getting glued up myself.

So I just pop a little blob of glue.

Yeah.

On their back.

How heavy are these tags?

They hardly weigh anything at all,
and to an ant like this,

they won't even really notice it.

There we go. It's fiddly work.

It is. You just need to...

And that should dry in a short time?

Very quickly, yeah.

I should point out that what
we're doing isn't hurting

the soldier ants at all.

How long would they survive
in the wild anyway?

These sorts of ants would only live
a couple of months, often.

They're not long-lived.

This is going to be great,

because this is going to
tell us what these soldiers

are doing, which we don't have
a chance of finding out.

And where they are.

Yeah, and how much they move around,
what they're getting up to,

which we know very little about,
if anything, really.

So it is original research, this?

Yes.

Every tagged ant will emit
a unique radio signal.

And to detect those signals,

we've placed radio receivers
all over the nest.

This will allow us to track
each individual ant

and follow its every movement.

We don't know what the
ants are going to do,

or even if this experiment will work,
but we're hoping it will give us

new insights into the role
of the soldiers in the colony.

'While we've been busy,
so have the foraging ants.'

Just look at that.

That's barely three hours

and already there's an incredibly
well-established trail.

Yeah, it's teeming with ants.

We've got a really nice flow of ants
going this way without leaves,

and these leaf-carrying ants going
back to that big fungus garden

over there, so it's really,
really nice.

Now, it seems to me that
a few of these are a bit confused,

and some are going the wrong way.

Yeah, I think we've got a little
bit of a pinch point here.

It's so busy going in this direction
that I think some of these

ants are getting turned around,
but that will even itself out.

Collectively, the ants carrying
leaves are going in that direction,

and the ants not carrying leaves are
going in that direction,

but there's always
a few little errors.

I feel I want to help the ones that
are heading the wrong way and just

go, "Come on," take you off and put
you down there, bit of a head start.

'These ants are finely-tuned
leaf-cutting machines.

'A large colony can consume the
same weight of vegetation

'per day as a cow.

'And they're making short work of
the plants we're giving them.'

It's fantastic to watch them at work,
because if you just look at it,

glanced at it, it would just seem to
be random, but it clearly isn't.

I don't know
if you can see up close, George,

the way that they're actually
cutting the leaf fragments.

It's really interesting. It's not
how you might expect them to do it.

They're not using those
mandibles like scissors.

The right-hand jaw is
anchoring the leaf,

and the other one is a bit
more like a guillotine.

Yeah,
more like a blade going through.

'This method is incredibly powerful,

'enabling the ant to slice through
even the toughest of leaves.'

Here we can see that same blade-like
technique being used

on a very thick banana leaf.

They're anchoring themselves with
the back feet, the back legs,

so when they go around with this
guillotine, they're describing

an arc of a circle, and the bigger
the ant, the bigger the arc.

Absolutely.

So you end up with a really nice
mechanism to make sure that

bigger ants carry bigger loads.

Over the next few days,

our ants establish the leaf-cutting
operation on an impressive scale.

A marching column across the ropes,
over the foraging table

and up the bridge.

When they reach the top,
the ants head down into the nest,

making their way through the tubes
towards the fungus gardens.

There, smaller and smaller
ants chop up the fragments

until it's mashed into
a kind of plant mulch.

The tiniest ants of all then insert
this mulch into the growing fungus.

There's nothing
haphazard about this process.

The structure we see here is
carefully built by the ants.

The pattern of ridges
and hollows allows them

to fit more fungus
into a confined space,

and the hollows provide a safe place
to nurture the brood.

The whole process is like a massive
production line.

It just looks like a conveyor belt
of green material just disappearing.

It feels like the right
sort of language to use.

We've got an industrial cutting
process going on here.

We've got this conveyor belt going
back to the processing, the factory,

if you like, back at the nest,
so it's a real machine at work.

It's this kind of collective
endeavour that has made ants

so fascinating to us
humans down the ages.

During the Industrial Revolution,
when factory life was

transforming human society,
the parallels were striking.

Dr Charlotte Sleigh has studied how
we viewed ants throughout history.

I think the 18th century is a period
when you start seeing some really

sustained interest in ants and the
way that they live, and a lot

of those very earliest writers were
coming from a theological tradition.

Indeed, many of them
were ordained clergyman.

The qualities that the ants
exhibited

were considered to be
really twofold.

One of them was industriousness,
they worked, really, really hard,

and that's something everybody
should do, and the other thing

that they exhibited was what the
Victorians called mutual aid.

That is to say,
they helped one another,

and supported one another
in the life of the nest.

And as the Victorians travelled
the world on the business of Empire,

they encountered new and
intriguing species of ant.

One such traveller, an English
engineer called Thomas Belt,

particularly admired
the leafcutters.

Thomas Belt was a mining engineer,

and when he went out to Nicaragua,
around about 1870,

he was not impressed with
the native Nicaraguans,

he was not impressed with
the Hispanic colonists,

he thought they had become
sort of lazy and dependent

on the native labour,
but what he really rated

were the leafcutter ants,
and in particular,

he was so tremendously impressed
with the mining that they did,

just like he was planning to,
with the tunnels they constructed,

it was as though he had found the
English in Nicaragua in the ants.

Watching our leafcutters at work,

it's easy to see why Thomas Belt
was so impressed.

Their leaf cutting operation
is a highly-sophisticated,

highly-organised collective
endeavour.

This remarkable ability to cooperate
isn't unique to the leafcutters.

Adam's been investigating on another
species of ant

that takes the idea of cooperation
to a whole new level.

Floating on the Amazon River is
a wonder of the animal world.

It may look like a tangle of weeds,
but up close,

it's a seething mass of ants.

This is Solenopsis invicta,
the fire ant.

To survive the regular floods
of the Amazon, an entire ant colony

can join together as one large raft,
built from their own bodies.

They can survive like this
for months, waiting for dry land.

So, how do the fire ants do it?

'I've come to Georgia Institute
of Technology in America, to meet

'a scientist who's tried to discover
the secrets of the fire ant raft.

'It's my first chance to see
these extraordinary

'boat-builders up close.'

One of the big questions
people ask is

what happens to the ants
on the bottom.

Do they drown, and the answer is no.

They essentially remain dry,

even those bands that break through
the surface tension of the water

and are fully submerged trap a layer
of air around their bodies

so they can still breathe.

So there's an obvious thing for us
to do now, which is to try

and submerge them
and see what happens.

Can you push these down?

When you push it under the water,

they retain a pocket of air
around their bodies.

It's almost encapsulating them
inside an air pocket.

I can show you that here.

They're very buoyant.

They are. There we go.

So there's a silvery sheen
over the outside,

which is all the air bubbles
that have been trapped.

That's the air-water
interface line, there.

Each ant is naturally
water repellent.

Droplets simply slide off them.

And when thousands of ants combine,

the result is a raft that
is virtually unsinkable.

When you do push them under the
water, they pull themselves

even tighter together, so that
when the subjected to the high

pressures underneath the water,
it still keeps the water out.

Magnified hundreds of times,

the secrets of the fire ant raft
are revealed.

The mandibles are used to grab
hold of a nest-mate's leg.

At the end of each leg is
an adhesive pad and a claw.

This, like a sticky grappling hook,
allows them

to form further flexible connections
with any nearby nest-mate.

The ants' own bodies
act as a set of interlocking units,

so the entire colony can turn
itself into a single structure.

So this is really an unsinkable,
self-healing lifeboat?

It is. It is a force to be
reckoned with, that's for sure.

This remarkable ability allows
the fire ants to survive

the worst floods of the Amazon.

Cooperation has made them an
engineering marvel of the
natural world.

And one of the most successful
and species on the planet.

It's now been ten days since our ants
were released from the nest.

And I've come back to see how far
the colony has come.

And straightaway, I can see
foraging trails now traverse
environment from end to end.

The fungal gardens
I saw last time have grown,

and I can see some new ones too.

Since they arrived in their new home,
the ants have made real

progress towards getting
their society up and running again.

One of the best examples of this
is at the very bottom of the nest.

We're now in the bowels
of the colony,

right down below where all
the ants have their nest chambers.

And the reason we're down here
is that there's a lot happening.

The ants have a waste dump down here.

All that leaf processing produces
a lot of waste that needs to be
dealt with.

And ants cope with the trash
burden in a similar way to us.

This is an ant landfill.

Now, what we've got here is
a waste dump they've made

actually in the trough that
surrounds the whole colony.

And that's a water-filled trough,
which is designed to keep
the ant in.

What's happened is,
the ants have built a waste dump.

And because it's wet and the bacteria
are building up in here,

the smell of decaying ants and fungus
is overpowering, it's disgusting.

Normally, the dump is placed in
chambers at the bottom of the colony

where workers turn over the waste
as a gardener does their flowerbeds.

This speeds up the breakdown
of potentially harmful substances.

But the ants aren't just
dumping their garbage down here,

they are also disposing
of dead bodies.

Over on this side is the graveyard.

Now, this is actually
very interesting.

The ants, of course, don't
live for ever and when they die,

their remains are taken down
and dumped out of the colony.

And that in my hand is just dead
remains of literally hundreds
and hundreds of ants,

of all castes, small workers, large
workers, soldiers.

So, when the ants have no longer
any function

and when they die they are simply
taken out and dumped.

The main reason why ants have to keep
the waste and the dead remains

of ants out of the way
of the colony is that when you're

in such high abundances in the
colony you don't want any diseases

to spread so you have to maintain
your environment, it has to be clean.

So anything that could
possibly rot is removed.

Seeing the dump and the graveyard
really brings it home to me

just how sophisticated
the ant colony is.

It's easy to see why people have
looked at the ants

and thought they were seeing our own
world reflected back.

We've even used the language
of our own social structures to
describe ant society.

Workers, soldiers, the Queen.

But, is ant society really
organised in this kind of hierarchy?

To answer that question,
we need to take a closer look

at the roles of the different
ants in our colony,
especially the Queen.

Tended round-the-clock by workers
and fiercely protected

by soldiers, she's the colony's most
prized member.

But does that mean she's in charge?

I can't introduce you to our colony's
Queen because she's deep in

a chamber somewhere behind me, and I
wouldn't want to disturb her anyway.

But Adam has brought a Queen from
a much smaller colony

and we can take a closer look at her.

So, what we've got here, George,
is one I dug out the ground
in Trinidad.

There's the Queen.
I've never seen the Queen before
like that.

She's an impressive creature,
she's impressive in her own right,

but when you see her next to the
smaller ants it gives you an
idea of how big she is.

We can see the Queen's enormous body
protruding from the fungus,

with smaller ants attending her.

Inside her large abdomen
are the ovaries that allow her to lay
up to 30,000 eggs a day!

So, is the Queen in our colony
roughly the same size?

Yeah, the Queen in our colony will
be exactly like this.

This is the same
species from the same place.

She's a beautiful sort of
velvety-brown colour? Yeah.

I just want to just touch her. Yeah.

She's beautiful.

Our colony will only ever have one
Queen in residence.

But once a year, it will produce new
queens who will leave the nest to
start new colonies.

This is also the only time
the colony will produce males,

and these males have one sole
purpose - to mate.

Leafcutters have never been
observed mating in the wild,

but we can see how much
of a large-scale operation this is

with the British species,
the wood ant.

In late summer, the colony produces
hundreds of new queens and males.

These ants have wings
and they fly from the nest
en masse to find a mate.

This event is called
the nuptial flight.

These winged individuals
are the females, the new queens,
the males that they'll mate with.

It is a very effective way of
dispersing, not just mating

with individuals from another
colony, but also spreading out and
spreading the colony far and wide.

After the nuptial flight,
the males simply die.

The Queen will never mate again.

She's now ready to start
a new colony.

From now on, her role is to lay eggs.

It's a staggering thought that all
the ants in our colony have
the same mother.

And as males are only
produced for the brief mating period,

all the ants we see here are
female and they're all sisters.

And there's something else that's
intriguing here.

All the eggs the Queen
lays are essentially the same.

So how can they become all
the different kinds of ant that
make up the colony?

The workers are in control
of what goes on.

Because when the Queen lays eggs,
she doesn't lay an egg

for a minor worker, or a soldier,
and an egg for a queen,
she just lays an egg.

So it's totally how that larva that
hatches from the egg is

nurtured, how much food it's given
that determines what it turns into.

So the workers who feed the larva
they are actually controlling

the number of soldiers and worker
castes produced within the colony.

They're really flexible and dynamic
and can respond to what's going on
in the environment.

So if we start disturbing this
colony, they'll start producing
more soldiers.

And it's happening right in here now?

It's happening right here, all
over these fungus gardens,
they're rearing these workers up

within these fungus gardens and
they're responding to what's
going on, responding to the lights,

to heat, to food, responding to what
the Queen's doing in terms of how
many eggs she's laying.

And that information is somehow
integrated in the workers, it's all
about the workers this colony,

it's not really about the Queen,
she's just popping out eggs.

So the ant colony has a very
particular form of
social organisation.

The Queen is the only ant
who reproduces.

Her eggs will become
the workforce of the colony.

Each generation raises
the next, from egg to adult.

This results in multiple generations
working together for the good
of the colony.

And these attributes put our ants
in a very special group of insects.

The truly social or eusocial insects.

Eusocial insects
are phenomenally successful.

Where as they only make up less than
5% of all insect species,

they account for the majority
of the insect biomass on Earth.

Apart from ants, the major groups
of eusocial insects are termites,
wasps and bees.

WINGS VIBRATE

Together, these insects outnumber all
the others on Earth combined.

Being eusocial is
one of the most important,

evolutionary developments
in the animal kingdom.

It's such a significant step,

that scientists are trying to
discover when it first occurred.

And what it is about being eusocial
that gives these insects such
an advantage.

Dr David Grimaldi is the curator
of fossil insects at the American
Museum of Natural History.

He's spent 25 years researching
specimens of ants and other insects
millions of years old.

This sample is from
the Cretaceous era.

These early ants were wandering
around at the time of the dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs died out but the ants
went on

to become astonishingly abundant.

These ants are a window
into prehistory.

The sap of ancient trees trapped them
as they foraged and then

hardened into amber, preserving them
for millions of years.

Now these remarkable specimens
are helping scientists discover

more about the origins
of eusocial insects.

There is one remarkable
piece from the Cretaceous,

probably the most important piece,
a chunk of 100-million-year
old amber,

that contains ten individuals,
almost certainly workers.

The ants are so rare in
Cretaceous amber,

so the probability that you would
get ten individuals preserved

in one piece just based on chance
alone is astronomically improbable.

Unless of course, they were social.

Other ancient samples revealed that
being social didn't just

affect the ants' behaviour,
it also changed their anatomy.

These ants have pouches to share
food with their sisters.

This feature of and anatomy is
most clearly seen today in
the Australian honeypot ant.

These ants are so full of food,
they can hardly move.

They're like living larders,
feeding their sisters.

When you have many, many individuals
that specialise in foraging

and protection and nursing of the
larva and in defence of the nest,

you can be much,
much more effective.

So, being social is
a tremendous adaptation,

perhaps one of the most effective
adaptation is in the animal kingdom,

because we can see that when ants
become highly, highly social,

they become
a very dominant life form.

The advantages brought by
eusociality have allowed these

insects to dominate the globe.

Ants have been called
ecosystem engineers,

as they can change
the environment around them.

Nutrients released from their
underground nests fertilise

the surrounding soil,

which in turn promotes the growth
of plant life on the surface.

With more plants come more animals,
and studies have shown that an

ant colony can actually increase the
diversity of animal life around it.

Eusocial insects can even
affect our lives.

Without bees to pollinate our plants,

we wouldn't be able to grow
enough food crops.

You might say it's eusociality
that feeds our world.

It's been 15 days

since we began following
the progress of our ant colony.

In that time,
they've been far from idle.

They're now well-established
in a nest we built for them.

The most amazing change since
the colony has really become

established is the incredible
growth of the fungus gardens.

You can see the green leaf material
where the fungus hasn't quite

grown yet, so it's just becoming
white from the base up.

You can see at
the very outside edge,

you've got all the chewed,
green material,

the food for the fungus,
and then the fungus moves up.

It's fragile as anything.

It's just...

It's just a miracle
of micro-engineering, this.

And it's one of the most beautiful
things I've ever seen.

To see how much progress
the ants have made re-growing

their fungal gardens, we're going
to open up a nest box again.

Look at that. There we go.
They're not happy about this.

You can really see the structure
of the fungus garden.

They are really...
That whole thing is hollow

and there is a soldier in there.

This is their very reason
for being, isn't it?

That is the major resource.

Yes, it's not like a mushroom
or a toadstool. It's very fragile.

It's more like a sponge.

There's a huge surface area in here,
so there's lots of little

chambers and cavities and places for
them to feed. That is unbelievable.

It's a really beautiful structure.
Really soft. Yeah.

It's these white tufts, produced
by the fungus, that feed the colony.

They contain just the right
balance of nutrients to support

the developing brood.

This fungus garden alone,
grown since the ants arrived,

will feed thousands of new ants.

It's the clearest indication yet

that our leafcutter colony
is thriving.

Before we get completely inundated,

I think we're going to have to put
this back down very gently.

Put that back.

Ah, one's gone down my front.
Ah-ah! Ouch!

HE GASPS

Ah, yep.

See, they're incredibly good
at defending. This is their colony.

And we've broken into it.
And that's the result.

I don't think we'll be
doing that again.

I'm beginning to regret this now.

We've had a good look
at the fungus garden,

and we've seen a great response,
but yeah, perhaps not again.

Away from the nest, there
are more signs of progress.

The ants are constantly monitoring
their long foraging trails.

If any blockages occur,
workers swiftly clear them.

What our colony is showing is
organisation on a massive scale.

And that begs an important question.

How did they organise all this?
How did they know what to do?

Humans wouldn't be able to do this
without some kind of hierarchy,

without somebody taking
responsibility, giving instructions.

And, as we've seen,
this is not the case with ants.

There is no hierarchy.

No central command or control from
any individual or group of ants.

Not even the queen.

So how do the ants do it?

To help answer that question,
Adam's going to put them to the test.

I've set the ants a problem.
I've given them a Y-shaped trail.

At one end of that Y is food
and at the other end is nothing.

And I've connected that trail
up to the main trail,

so they're pouring down out of
the nest, coming onto this trial

and are being faced with a choice.

Do they go left or right?

Our ants have a clear 50-50 choice
between right and left.

But after just 20 minutes,

virtually all of them are heading
down a path that leads to the food.

So, how do they know where to go?

At this distance,
they can't see the food.

Their eyesight isn't good enough.

Instead, it's all down to be
ingenious way the ants share

information with each other,

using their acute sense of smell.

The ants moving down here
are laying behind them

a chemical pheromone trail that
marks the way for other ants.

They can detect tiny amounts
of these pheromones

using their antennae.

When an ant goes out foraging,
she leaves the pheromone trail

on the ground behind her that
her sisters are able to follow.

If she finds food, she will then
lay down even more pheromone on her

way back to the nest,

making the original trail
even stronger.

If she doesn't find food,
she won't lay any more pheromone

and the trail simply
evaporates away.

The stronger the pheromone trail,

the more likely an ant is
to follow it.

And, in turn,
add her own pheromone to the route.

When this is applied to hundreds
and thousands of ants,

very strong trails are produced
that link the nest directly to food

sources in the environment.

And what that means is
that the branch that's got

food at the end of it is much more
concentrated in terms

of pheromone than the branch
that doesn't.

So that when ants come to that fork
and they have to make a decision,

they follow the trail head that
has the most amount of pheromone.

So they're much more likely to go
right than they are to go left.

That means these ants can
organise themselves.

The queen's not in the colony
going, "Turn right, turn left,

"take the third exit."

They follow the trail
of pheromone to the food.

So each individual ant is dealing
with simple signals, simple rules.

But collectively this system
achieves complex results.

It enables the colony to find new
food sources, exploit them

efficiently and react swiftly
when they are depleted.

This is what underpins the
entire leafcutting operation.

But pheromones aren't the only way
leafcutters communicate.

They're constantly exchanging
information,

and with the right technology,
we can even listen in.

Is it possible to actually hear?

Yes, luckily, I'm festooned
with gadgets,

so we can actually...

We can actually mic these up.

Dr Gadget.

Yes, we can get some sound
out of these.

They're very small animals
and it must be a very faint noise.

Yes, it's a very small noise
and it's quite high-frequency,

but if we just
press that on to there...

To human ears,
the ants' world seems silent,

but amplified by the microphones,
the leaf comes alive with noise.

'And there is one particular sound
we're listening for.

'In amongst the sound of leaves
being cut

'and ant footsteps is
a high-pitched chirrup.'

ANTS CHIRRUP

'This is stridulation,

'a sound the ants make by rubbing two
sections of their abdomen together.'

That little chirrup? Yeah.
There. Yup.

So they're making this sound
but it's part of a group of sounds

they make, these sounds.

'That little chirruping noise
is a recruitment signal.

'The more nutritious a leaf is,
the more the ant make this noise,

'sending a cascade of vibrations
through the plant.

'And this draws other ants to
the tastiest part of the plant,

'which means the ants will tend
to take the best leaves first.'

But there's more to stridulation
than simply leaf cutting.

It can make the difference
between life and death.

As they build their underground
network of tunnels and chambers,

our ants, just like human miners,
face an ever-present risk.

A roof collapse
could bury them alive.

To discover how they respond, we're
going to simulate this catastrophe.

And time for another gadget.

This is a plate microphone,

so this is recording directly
from what's on the surface.

'We're going to put an ant
on the surface of this microphone

'and bury it with soil, just
like a roof collapse in the nest.

'And then, we listen.'

You put that on, and I'll...
I'll wrangle the ant,

you get some earth on there. Ready?

There we go. Buried alive.

So this is going to be
the sound of ant fear.

This is an ant that has been
trapped under the soil.

It's calling its nest mates.

ANT CHIRRUPS

There's a bit of hiss there,
but you can hear...

That's the noise they're making

by moving their abdomen
backwards and forwards.

That's very obvious, isn't it?

It's a very clear signal that
causes a very specific behaviour.

"Come over here, dig me out."

'What we're hearing
is the ant's alarm call.

'She is appealing
to her nest mates for help.

'With only a loose covering
of soil, this ant

'isn't in any real danger.

'As she digs her way to the surface,
the noise of panic stops

'and she emerges.'

There we go. She's free.

You actually get a window into their
world. It really is amazing.

Because they're so small,
we can't hear these sounds without

fancy microphones and things,
but once you start hearing them,

you realise they are living
in a very complicated world.

They produce sounds,
they've got chemicals.

It's a very complex world
they're in.

So this is how the ants
organise themselves.

Each individual follows simple rules
using communication tools

like pheromones and stridulation.

And applied to huge numbers
of individuals,

these simple rules allow the colony
to solve complex problems.

This is collective swarm
intelligence.

Ant species around the world
use this ability to tackle

problems that challenge
even us humans.

'I've come to Bristol to discover
how one species of ant uses swarm

'intelligence to make
a vital decision.'

These are Temnothorax albipennis,
also known as the rock ant.

They're absolutely tiny,
only about two millimetres long.

Don't let their size fool you, these
tiny creatures are smart operators.

They use an ingenious set of rules
to make decisions that

test us to the limits.

'For instance, house-hunting.

'We might find it stressful.

'But to the rock ants,
it's a matter of life and death.

'Here, at the University
of Bristol's ant lab,

'Professor Nigel Franks

'has spent the last decade studying
the behaviour of these insects.'

So this is a rock ant nest
that you have set up in the lab,

pretty similar to what you would
get in the wild? In a sense, yes.

In terms of the spatial scale,
the spatial arrangement,

the colonies normally live in very,
very flat crevasses in rocks,

with maybe a millimetre
between the floor and ceiling,

so we can keep them in these
nice simple microscopes like this.

As soon as they get them destroyed,
particularly if they lose

the roof of their nest, in the wild,
they can't do anything about that.

They simply have to find a new nest
site to live in. OK, let's do it.

'Removing the roof effectively
destroys the nest.

'In the wild, this would be a
perilous situation for the colony.

'It's time to find a new home
as quickly as possible.

'We've given them a range of options
of varying suitability.'

Right over here we've got
a really poor nest.

Too small and, in addition to that,
it's got some dead bodies in there.

It's an absolute slum. Over on this
side we've got the absolute des res.

We've got a nice big nest,
hygienic, clean

and it's made dark with
a red filter.

So we've got from really superb
palatial accommodation

right down to an absolute slum.

'The ants go scouting
for a new home.

'Like a team of insect surveyors,
they inspect each site,

'checking factors like hygiene
and light intensity.

'It doesn't take them
long to discover our des res.

'It's clean, it's dark,
but is it big enough?

'This is where their ingenious
system of rules is revealed.'

They will go inside, they will
actually pace the map in a way and

work out the floor area to see if
it is big enough for a whole colony.

'When the ant encounters
a potential new nest,

'she criss-crosses it many times.

'As she does so,

'she leaves behind her on the ground
a tangle of pheromone trail.

'She will then leave the new nest,

'but that's not
the end of her assessment.

'A short while later, she
returns for a second inspection.'

They then sort of smell the ground

and every time they cross
a previous path, they note it.

And, essentially, if they were in
a very large nest, the frequency

with which they would cross
a previous path would be very low.

If they're in a very small nest,
it would be very high.

'So by counting the number of times
she crosses her own path,

'an ant is able to very accurately
work out how big a new nest is.'

So it's a beautiful example of the
ants using an exquisitely simple

rule to solve a very
complicated problem.

'But one ant's view isn't enough.

'Like us, they need a second
opinion. And quickly.

'Because without a nest,
the colony is in danger.'

If she thinks a nest is suitable,
she will return to the colony

and she will attempt to recruit
one other nest mate by a process

we call tandem running.

'To get that second opinion,
the scouting ant

'physically leads a nest mate to
the new location on a tandem run.'

'When the tandem runners
arrive at the new nest,

'the leader heads back to the colony
to recruit another ant,

'whilst the follower carries
out her own survey.

'If she thinks the new nest
is a suitable new home,

'she will also return to the colony
and recruit yet another ant.'

And so the numbers snowball slowly.
One, two, four, eight, etc.

'Because time is of the essence,

'they can't wait for every ant
to agree.

'So, once a critical number of ants,
which can be as few as ten,

'are in favour of the new site,
another rule kicks in.

'Tandem running stops,
and a moving behaviour begins.'

They will run back to the old nest

and start picking up
their nest mates, whacking them

over their shoulders, so to speak,
and running them to the new nest.

And they can run with an ant over
their shoulder or a huge brood item

in their mandibles at
three times the speed

that they can lead a tandem run.
So it's like a gear change.

It's like going from second gear
to fifth gear, and - wallop!

The colony commits and will
rapidly emigrate to the nest

they have chosen.

The rock ants have used simple
rules, applied one after the other,

to find a swift, collective solution
to a life-and-death situation.

And this is just one species of ant
with its own set of rules to

solve its own unique
set of problems.

In the wild,

driver ants create imposing trails
guarded by huge soldiers to

ensure the safe passage of the
brood from one place to another.

The Asian weaver ants
build intricate nests

using their own brood as glue guns.

This is an insect using a tool.

All of these behaviours,
wonders of the natural world,

owe their existence to simple rules
followed by colony

members in the same way over
and over again.

Back in our colony,
we are approaching

the end of our project to explore
the world of the ants.

But there's one cast
of ant whose roles

and behaviours remain more
mysterious than any other.

The soldiers.

As we've seen, they tend to remain
hidden deep within the nest.

But we're about to discover
some of their secrets.

In our most ambitious experiment,

we've used radio tracking technology
to follow the movements

of a group of soldiers day
and night over a period of ten days.

Now, the results are in. And Adam
has been crunching the numbers.

How difficult would this
have been in the wild colony?

This sort of thing would be
impossible, because in the wild,

we'd be underground right now.

You know, you can't use
this sort of technology

deep in the ground in any
sort of effective way.

So we've got no insight
about how these things happen

in a natural nest. That's why
this is such a nice opportunity.

So now you've begun to analyse
all the results from the tagging.

What's beginning to emerge?

Well, what's really interesting
is that individual soldiers

are behaving in quite a strange way.
They're patrolling.

So one, for example, goes from
this box to this box to this box

back again, back again,
over about 20 hours.

We have others doing
exactly the same thing,

oscillatory behaviour between boxes.

So almost as if each
of the soldiers has a sector

of the nest they control.

Our results reveal the soldiers
as a highly organised security force.

Every ant we tag has an oscillating
patrolling behaviour,

all of it focused
around the fungus gardens.

And we discovered there's more
than one type of patrol.

Some soldiers moved back and
forth between just two nest boxes.

Others have a much larger route,

visiting five or more boxes
over a period of days.

This area here is
a hotspot of activity,

with a number of different patrols
converging on one box.

Due to the extra security presence,

it's our suspicion that this area
is the location of the queen.

Overall, what we see is an organised
security network, operating

on a regular schedule, guarding the
prized assets of the leafcutters -

the queen...

..the brood...

and the fungus.

That makes sense,
because they are the high-value

resource of the colony,
and that's where the young are.

Yes, so the soldiers seem to be
kind of barracked into these

areas where they've got
something to defend.

Our data indicate that the soldiers
are hardwired to patrol the nest,

poised and ready to repel anything
that threatens the colony.

To see that response,

we can simulate an attack on the nest
by pushing a camera down into it.

To the ants,
this appears to be a predator,

and it triggers a call to arms.

Ants near the camera release
a pheromone that signals alarm.

This pheromone attracts more ants
onto the scene.

Almost instantly, there is a whole
swarm attacking the camera.

Once again,
they are following a simple rule.

Defend the nest.

But in the wild,

following this rule is likely
to cost some ants their life.

This is a praying mantis
feeding on driver ants.

When the colony responds to
the threat, one of the first

ants on the scene throws herself
into the jaws of the mantis.

She stops the insect taking
any more of her nest mates,

but sacrifices her
life in the process.

And as more individuals arrive,
the tables turn,

and the predator literally
loses its head.

To achieve the collective
goal of defending the nest,

individual ant lives are expendable.

And this is the darker side of
the parallel that people have

drawn between humans and ants.

Instead of a model of
industriousness, a world of mindless

automatons, following rules,
unable to control their destiny.

There's a moment,
I think in the 20th century,

where certainly all those
ideas of industriousness are gone,

the ant becomes a very scary thing.

Ant society becomes everything
that humans want to avoid.

I think there are a couple of
things that add to that.

The experience
of the First World War,

and the sense of soldiers being
sent off anonymously to their death.

Also, I think, the experience
of mass life in factories.

You know, think about Henry Ford,

think about those cars
rolling off the production line.

That's really very
much like our leafcutter ants,

and their production line
with the leaves.

There's no room for individuality,
it's pretty horrific.

The ant is everything
we don't want to become.

It also find it's way into
science fiction films.

I mean, I remember a film
called Them, where the

Earth is being threatened
by these giant ants.

'There is no word to describe them.'

SHE SCREAMS

It's a classic Communist-era
movie, in fact.

The sort of,
the unknowability of these ants,

the sense that their operating
under some system that's

swayed by propaganda, that we
can't even really comprehend.

They are the classic Commie enemies.

Is there any type of gas
we could use?

No, we can't take a chance,
it might poison the whole city.

So bringing things right up-to-date
now, there has been

a change of emphasis, the interest
in what ants do is now altered a bit.

That's right, we've become
increasingly interested in them

as technological systems,
if you like. As natural computers.

And we're interested
in the way that they solve problems,

and the way in which they,
in particular,

find the most efficient way of
solving problems, the most efficient

ways of foraging for food, bringing
it back to the nest, and so on.

It's a radical thought.

It suggests we could see our ant
colony as a giant,

powerful computer,
that can solve complex problems.

Problems like finding sources
of leaves, and delivering them

efficiently to the parts of the
nest where they are required.

As we've seen, the colonies solve
these problems using a logical

system, based on pheromone trails.

And this system is now
inspiring new technologies,

designed to solve some very
large human problems.

Here, in the Texan heat,
a very cold industry is at work.

This is Air Liquide, a company that
supplies tanker loads of compressed

gas to thousands of customers,
from hospitals to oil refineries.

I'm here to meet Charles Harper,
to find out how insight from ants

is helping the business solve
a fiendishly-complicated problem.

Here we monitor the supply of,
and the production of all our gases

and our liquids
in the United States.

We have about 10,000 customer
sites to deliver to,

we have 1,000 trucks and drivers to
dispatch, so on any given day we

have to know who needs a delivery,
and where to source the liquid from.

Finding the best routes to get
the right truckloads to the right

customers every day is a massive
logistical challenge.

And this challenge has a name -
the travelling salesman problem.

The task is to find the shortest
route between a number of cities,

visiting each only once before
returning to the starting point.

With five cities, there are only
12 possible delivery routes.

But as more destinations are added,

the number of potential
routes skyrockets.

A trip with just 15 cities has
over 40 billion possible routes.

Air Liquide faces a travelling
salesman problem that has

trillions of possible solutions.

So for help, they
turned to the ants.

Inside this computer,
there is a programme based on ant

behaviour, it's called an ACO,
or ant colony optimisation.

So, you're running your delivery
network very similar to

an ant colony going out foraging,

only instead of bringing food in,
your looking to take goods out?

Exactly. Just the reverse,
and in our particular case,

we're delivering food out
to the customers,

in this case it's liquid
oxygen or nitrogen,

but as an ant colony
would bring food

and supplies back to the mound,
we use that ant motion, and ant

reinforcement in the pheromone
trail to simulate our routes.

The programme sends out
digital versions of ants

to investigate potential routes.

Just like our own leafcutters,

the digital ants lay virtual
pheromones as they go.

Shorter routes become reinforced
with pheromone, as more

and more ants begin to follow them.

While the longer roots begin to
evaporate, and are ignored.

It's the same technique our ants

use to establish the quickest
route to a food source.

The digital ants quickly
and efficiently identify the better

options, so there's no need to
calculate every possible route.

And Air Liquide gets
a highly-efficient way

to run its complex operations.

But solving complex delivery
problems is just

the beginning of what ant colony
optimisations can do.

Their ability to
identify the best

route from billions of options is
now helping scientists reach

far more ambitious destinations.

Dr Max Vesile, from the University
of Strathclyde's

Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory,
has studied how lessons

from the ant colony can be applied
to travelling through space itself.

Well, one thing we decided to do
some time ago was to try to use

ants to try and plan a trajectory
from one planet to another,

passing by a number of intermediate
planets, and exploiting

their gravity to change
the velocity of the satellite.

If you send a spacecraft
through the gravitational

field of a planet at
precisely the right angle,

it acts like a catapult,

propelling the spacecraft
across the solar system.

This is called a slingshot.

By using more than one planet,
it's possible to

slingshot across the solar system,
without the need for tons of fuel.

But calculating the best
combination of slingshots

is extremely complicated.

So, you need to go from one
point to another,

but you've got lots of points
in between,

that you need to pass
to get that boost?

Exactly, so what we asked the ants
do, is to tell us

the best possible sequence
of planets to reach the destination.

It's again similar to
the travelling salesman problem,

but in this case, these
cities are moving, and we have the

additional rule that we can visit
multiple times the same city.

And on top of that, basically
the cost of going from one city to

another, depends on the time
in which we reach the city.

So, this is a much
more complex problem

than ants are solving on Earth?
Definitely, yes.

This research work is still
in its infancy, but Max has tested

his galactic version of ant colony
optimisation on the Cassini probe.

Launched in 1997, it flew to Saturn,
propelled there by slingshots,

past Venus, the Earth, and Jupiter.

The digital ants not only replicated
this route, but also

suggested two others that would have
been quicker and more efficient.

It's literally millions of miles
away from leafcutting.

We've reached the end of our project
to explore the hidden world of ants.

The past month has revealed
the sheer scale

of their organisational powers.

Well, it's incredible to see how
far the ants have come.

We've uprooted them, and brought them
halfway around the world.

We've seen them rebuild
their entire society

in the space of just
a few short weeks.

They've now taken control of this new
territory, from the outermost

plants to the depths of the nest,
and the colony is thriving.

We hope it will continue to be the
subject of scientific observation.

But for me, the colony has already
helped to show ants in a new light.

Rather than a vast number of
individuals, the colony is

really a super-organism, functioning
in a complex and sophisticated way.

The different ants like cells
and organs and animal,

have different functions, but
operate together as an ordered whole.

Seen as a super-organism, the ant
colony truly is one of the most

impressive achievements in the
evolution of life on our planet.

And the more
we come to understand it,

the more we can harness the genius
of the ants for our own benefit.

We now have a better understanding
of the parallels

between ants and ourselves.

But we're only just beginning to
understand what they can teach us.

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