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

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. :[

"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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 *_*

Using their babies as a hot glue gun 😂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

This is one of the best science channels on KZfaq. Love this so much.

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

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

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.

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

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

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...

Absolutely mind blowing! I love this channel!

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

Ants : Individuality is overrated. FOR THE SWARM!

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 video left me in awe. Amazing content

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)

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

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

The music is making me emotional. So beautiful 🥺

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

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

omg , i love this channel AWESOME content , congratulations

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.

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

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.

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 KZfaq

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

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.

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

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

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😃

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!

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

Really well written. Nice job. 👍

I just love the concept❤️

You will get to million soon.

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

Your videos are so well done

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

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

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

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

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.

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

incredible footage!

love science!!!! ty for content

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

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.

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.

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

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

I think I love ants now

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

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! 🤷‍♂️😜

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

I gotta go to work in 4hours and I'm over here learning about antcolonies at 2 AM

Stunning, thank you

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

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.

The music is making me emotional. So beautiful

Hello. I love your videos and wanted to let you know about a small problem with this video's captions. The caption file seems to have been formatted incorrectly. The whole transcript displayed for 1sec at the beginning and not broken down into the appropriate timestamps. Otherwise, the video -- like all of your other videos -- was great. And I appreciate the time, effort and/ or money you put into your captions.

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.

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

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

Remarkable film. This extraordinarily informative and captivating.

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

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

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.

Sometimes, after killing a bug and combing minutes later, I just stand there and watch the ants work. Fascinating

Subbed U Dear , AwesomeUpload