So I was watching BBC Earth last night and saw an interesting piece on insects around the world. One of the species they talked about in particular was the grass cutter ant. These ants live in colonies of up to 8 million individuals across South America and Africa. What caught my attention, however, is the system the ants have developed to produce their own food. They are, in effect, (ant) farmers.
Within any given colony there are several different types of ant, from scout to cutter, that each of defined roles within the community. Of primary importance here are the cutters. They venture out from the colony and harvest up to 34 lbs of grass a day to bring back to the colony. However, they are incapable of digesting the cellulose in the grass. So, instead, they coat the grass with their saliva and feed it to the fungus that they cultivate underground. They then eat the fungus.
All of this is quite cool but then things got really interesting. See, when the fungus grows it produces CO2. Because the ants respirate and because the fungus is grown in closed spaces underground this is a problem for the ants. Left alone the CO2 would fill the colony and the ants would suffocate. So the ants have created a rather unique system to ventilate their colonies by taking advantage of pressure differences between the areas where they grow fungus and dirt towers they construct on top of their hives. This causes air movement across the fungus and clears out the CO2 and keeps the ants from killing themselves through their own farming.
The parallels should be obvious. Now, I’m not suggesting that we ventilate the earth by poking holes in the atmosphere and letting all the CO2 out. But it is nevertheless interesting to note that we are not the only species with this problem of CO2 production.
34#!! Dang.
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