The Insane Biology of: Ant Colonies 

Here's the link to the podcast! watchnebula.com/modulus/working-under-pressure

"They're found on every continent except *Ant*arctica." _ironic_

Imagine being a baby and your aunt decides to use you for arts and crafts.

"Using their babies like a hot glue gun" is not a sentence I would ever imagine of hearing

Wow, you unblocked a memory! When i was like 6-7 years old and i was playing somewhere outside i saw one group of ants that were standing still, without moving, and even if i threatened or touched them they would still not move. I didn't think much of it since i was just a little child, but the memory of this odd event sticked to my mind apparently. Today i've watched this documentary, and as soon as i saw those dying ants all still at 12:06 this childhood memory immediately popped up! Now, after about 30 years, i understand what happened. Those guys had lost their queen and they were letting themselves go. Thank you!!

Aren't they awesome?! True rulers of the Earth! Ant love forever! ❤🐜🐜🐜 PS - Hate to be that guy but the creatures at 0:38 are actually termites. Not your fault; whoever catalogued that footage thought they were ants. I've seen the exact stock footage used in tv shows and videos about ants.

Dude where did this amazing channel come from Absolutely flawless sound design, script and editing

"And been the subject of every kids backyard curiosity" That reminds me of when my youngest sister was a toddler. We went to visit one of my mom's college friends, and my sister was totally engrossed in watching an anthill out front. My mom's friend's husband thought she was the coolest little kid for being so fascinated by the ants. It was super cute.

When I was a kid, I used to observe ants in my neighborhood. Occasionally I would see two ants touching their antennae together, but I thought that maybe I was imagining it. But this video shows that ants really do that as a form of communication. So I was right after all.

"Maybe you Immediately thought of the blue whale." Nah mate, thought of ants. It's the title of the video

Ants are truly insane! Did you know that wood ants even sacrifice their own lives to save their colony? The territorial battles that break out between neighboring anthills each spring are warfare of the highest order, involving thousands of casualties and chemical weapons. Our film team was thrilled when they watched two colonies how they conduct scouting expeditions and subdue their enemies.

Very informative video! But I wish you would have mentioned, the underlying mechanism for eusociality among some insects (ants, bees etc.) probably is the sex determination via "haplodiploidy" a.k.a "arrhenotoky", where male drones hatching from unfertilized eggs have half the chromosome set of her queen mom, while the queen and the infertile female workers have the full (diploid) set. Ultimately this makes the workers more related to each other (75%) than to her mother or their male siblings (50%). This favor eusociality: helping the queen laying more eggs spreads the workers' genes more effectively than they could do on their own.

As I found out too late with the cucumbers that I was growing this year, some ants will even farm aphids for the juice that the aphids produce. Ants are pretty amazing... though I'm still upset at them for causing my cucumbers demise.

Wow ants have more plans and ideas for their lives than i do lol

first thing that came to mind when talking about the most dominant creature was funghi and lichen... we need to know more about funghi and lichen *_*

Scientists cutting open ants and spreading their juices on the ground to see if the other ants react... Imagine how terrifying it would be if aliens did that while trying to study us. :[

I knew about weaver ants, but I didn't know the extent of their colony building process. That's actually amazing. Everytime I watch something on ants, I understand why scientists say if they were bigger they'd take over humans lol

that method for using larvae as biological hot glue gun is some next level child labor stuff lol

the dying of a colony after a queen dies depends on the ant species. Yellow crazy ants for one are known to merge nests with other Yellow crazy ants and housing multiple queens.

I've watched countless videos on ants, and I can confirm this is the best so far, covering all the basics while giving some great details on this beings. Congratulations on this work. The editing and music were spot on too

Thank you for this, it was very interesting & informative. Please keep up the great work.

Using their babies as a hot glue gun 😂

Was that your hand at 0:46 Steph? Definitely seems like something you would do......

Very interesting, absolutely love this channel, always leaves me wanting to learn more. Educational channels are the best part of RU-vid. Definitely gonna check out the podcast. Keep it up 👏👏

I hope this channel grows really big. Amazing well put videos.

Human toddler: eats glue* Ant toddler: makes glue*

It's very impressive how much stock footage they were able to find on ants.

At the end of these um always so excited by your business endeavors and your creations of great connections and content, thank you!

I really like your voice. The animations are solid The topics go quite in depth without being too complex. I learned a lot from this Great job

Imagine not being found on a continent THAT LITERALLY HAS YOUR NAME IN IT. You had one job, ants😑

I like ants because whenever they come inside my house in a line I know it's going to be rainy season

Very interesting, absolutely love this channel, always leaves me wanting to learn more. Educational channels are the best part of RU-vid. Definitely gonna check out the podcast. Keep it up

This is one of the best science channels on RU-vid. Love this so much.

Fun fact, this video is about the most common type of ants, there is ants were there is no queens... And worker fight whith eachother to become the next queen

Fantastic presentation. I have been obsessed with Ants my whole life. Even King Solomon mentioned them. Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.

One of my favorite videos. Keep coming every now and then.

Damn, this world is so amazing. And we just take it for granted. We are surrounded by magic. Btw this must be the best channel on RU-vid

An ant's loyalty is the ultimate Chinese's government dream

Imagine a leafy ball full with millions of ants dropping from the tree top instead of an apple while a young scientist is reading a book and thinking about the world...

I feel that calling them "queen" ants and imagining them to be rulers over the colony is us projecting ourselves onto the ants. That's why I like the idea of "the superorganism." She's not a queen, she's merely the reproductive organ.

You are a master at introducing your topics. Your intros literally PEAK interest

Ants : Individuality is overrated. FOR THE SWARM!

This shows why we shouldn’t underestimate how advanced all the other forms of life is. What they lack in sophisticated technology and intelligence, they make up for with “brilli-ant” and mind blowing evolutionary and survival strategies. The amount of knowledge we can gain by studying them, and the rest of nature is truly extraordinary!

Absolutely mind blowing! I love this channel!

Excellent educational content; well photographed, researched, and narrated.

Not just ants, but trees are also more of a group connected by their roots than individuals. Humans as well. It's like the Earth is a living superorganism with "species" acting like systems when zoomed in.

It’s weird once you get the pattern of your intonation of words, when you read. I can hear the upspeak at the end of almost every word

That these videos don’t have 100 million views is kinda sad. This is many lifetimes of gathered information and put into a consumable form and format. Keep it up.

This video left me in awe. Amazing content

Amazing! Regaring the superorganism status of ants, it seems that modern science might take inspiration from classical philosophy, especially Aristotle's definition of an organism/living thing/soul as something that nutrifies, grows, and reproduces. Combine this with modern cellular biology and evo-devo, we may have a paradigm shift on what we would consider as life.

Thank you for making such amazing videos! I've been searching for a great educational biology channel forever.

The music is making me emotional. So beautiful 🥺

Dawkins explains insect altruism perfectly in The Selfish Gene using bees.

The quality of videos have improved tremendously! I remember your first video has some decent narration, but this one is just amazing! ( Maybe even better than Real Engineering xD)

Wow, this video is absolutely mind-blowing! The intricate biology and behaviors of ants are nothing short of incredible. It’s truly astonishing to see how these tiny creatures work together in such a highly organized manner. Watching this, I can’t help but marvel at the level of complexity in their instincts and behaviors. It’s almost as if there’s a master designer behind it all, carefully crafting the blueprint for these incredible creatures. This video certainly points to the existence of intelligent design by a creator.

I'm glad I found this channel, it's really interesting, plus your voice is perfect for narration! It reminds me of a female version of the guy that voices narration for Melodysheep (youtube channel). You both have the best narration voice I've probably ever heard.

This channel should get more subscribers. Such a well researched content.

I've always been fascinated by nature. Nothing in this world fills me with as much awe. I grew to really appreciate these brilliant little girls from Ants Canada's videos.

I'm not an evolutionary biologist but I enjoy learning about evolution. That said, my understanding is that group selection is not incompatible with the idea that selection takes place at the level of the gene. The way you presented this information was a little confusing because it made it sound that way. The way I think of it is that superorganisms like ants are just another layer/abstraction above multicellular organisms in the same way that individuals are a layer above the genes themselves. If you peel back the layers it looks something like: genes -> cells -> animals (multicellular life forms) -> super organisms.

Yo i cannot grasp how amazing this channel is. You guys rock

You should cover the Cuttle Fish. And keep up the amazing work!

Great video, but for ant biology you should mention haplodiploidy and the ant's place within hymenoptera (their close relationship to wasps and bees)

Amazing! I’m obsessed with this channel ❤❤❤❤❤

This is so amazing and meaningful....Thank you guys!

I just love the concept❤️

Excellent video, ecologically well put together. The community interactions surely are based on individuals but the analogy of Ants behaving like a Superorganism can make significant changes in how we understand ecology😃

omg , i love this channel AWESOME content , congratulations

what a beautiful video thanks for sharing, I really appreciate it

Thanks,thanks and thanks to Real science for this unique video

We want more videos on "The insane biology of" series

The music is making me emotional. So beautiful

Realy gread video, Thank you so much for making this quality content

You will get to million soon.

There's this Webnovel "Chrysalis" and I couldn't stop thinking about it while watching this. For the Colony, Anthony!

You are a gem. Thanks for doing what you do!

ive studied ants as a hobby since childhood and there was so much fresh info in this video its great. one question tho- regarding the theory that the more closely related genetically organisms are the more likely they are to help eachother, the narrator says ants do this even when not immediate family to fellow workers... but EVERY ant comes from the same queen, theyre literally all close kin... just seemed like an inconsistency.

1:36 Hate to break it to you, those ones look like termites to me...

Really pretty music in this video. EDIT: Just read video description, sound credit goes to Graham Haerther.

every time I watch a video u make I literally thank myself for subbing to your channel

Hey great video. Are you planing on making an termites video?

Great video!, a few things though, 0:37 and 1:35 are termites, also 3:09(maybe), 4:40 They seem to be based on nutrition in some cases but "insects and seeds" is a weird specification, most ant species don't even eat seeds and some don't eat insects.

Soy muy viejo, pero esto me hace ver este mundo pasajero aún más complicado pero también esperanzador. Gracias , es tan hermoso.

The fact the ants know to use Larve and could use the silk to stitch things together was genius on their part, look how good of a job and sturdy they stitched everything together.

This channel is actually so good.

Queen ants are just workers who have been given a more specialized diet which allows for the development of ovaries because of the fact that, during the course of evolution, the ancestral pre-ant began restricting its children's' diets in order to prevent them from developing said ovaries fully and to make them stay home and care for her and her growing family. She would then selectively allow other children to develop ovaries in order to spread her genes. It is not so much a "special kind of egg". This process is called parental manipulation. Extreme polymorphism such as in the case of leafcutter ants is exceedingly rare due to the amount of work it takes to make allometric growth work properly which allows for more nonviable than viable forms to occur throughout time so most ant castes are formed based out of age. The younger they are, the less expendable they are, and so they stay closer to the queen and take care of the nest. As they age they become more expendable and move outward until the point that they become foragers. Many species of ants come together in groups of 3-7 to form colonies and many will continue this polygynous lifestyle after the colony founding stage; it's a common misconception that there is a single queen in every colony. However, polygyny is not found in more primitive species. The ants are not loyal to the queen and their altruism is done for a selfish means. Because they are forced into a lifestyle of infertility they have no means of spreading their genes directly but are capable of doing so indirectly by raising reproductive sisters whom they share 75% of their genes with as opposed to the 50% they share with their mother. In fact, the queen is subject to being pushed around by the colony's workers because of the fact that they do not serve her and because there is competition among both individuals and castes for decision-making. The reason ant colonies die following the death of the queen is the fact that no one is left to replenish the dying worker population and the production of queens takes a prolonged period of time which is longer than the colony has before it dies off. Queens are produced naturally only after an inflection point in population level is reached wherein return on investment in resources reaches a peak then stops peaking. Will edit as I keep watching.

Those folding leaves ants surprised me, guess you'll never stop learning :D

incredible footage!

Remarkable film. This extraordinarily informative and captivating.

Imagine the level of detail in work humans could achieve if we used chemical systems to take control of ants.

I'm just as excited to watch the new real science as I am real engineering. Keep it up!

love science!!!! ty for content

Your videos are so well done

Could someone explain why she says that ant altruism does not line up with the selfish gene theory? If all the ants in the colony came from the same queen, then they all have the same genes right? So it makes sense that they are completely altruistic towards all the ants in the same colony, and hostile towards ants of other colonies. It seems to line up perfectly with the selfish gene theory.

Beautiful video about nature's OG communists ;) I admire how you're able to do these in-depth dive essays about such a broad range of subjects! Though, in the case of ants, I wish you would have discussed their intelligence a little more... Me and a friend of mine have been debating that for years at this point.

Really well written. Nice job. 👍

if the colony is born from 1 queen, they are all siblings, so I think the Dawkin's kinship theory still stands for ants...

Best video of my favorite RU-vidr

It's an interesting sensation. Feeling so uncomfortable and so awestruck at the same time.

I’ve never actually watched any videos on this channel. I listen to them at work, I feel like that says a lot about the quality of videos here! I will definitely watch them all again one day! 🤷‍♂️😜

Incredible animals! Thanks for the video! It's also cool to understand the difference between leafcutter ants and urban ants