Agricultural Ants

     Imagine just for a second that someone dropped you in the middle of the rainforest with no directions, no food, nothing. How would you find your way out or even find something to eat? There might be some edible things nearby, but once you set off who knows when you'll find food again. Now imagine you were an ant on the rainforest floor. It would seem even bigger and be even harder to find food. There doesn’t appear to be many options; you could stay in one place and starve after you run out of food, you could set out and hope you stumble upon a new source of food, or you could…start a farm?
     Well, that’s what the ant species Atta cephalotes did. It may seem hard to believe but they actually beat humans to agriculture by about 50 million years. Just as the development of agriculture lead to a more stable food supply for humans, these ants ensure they will have something to eat by "farming" fungi. Agriculture allowed humans to stay in one place for a much longer period of time before their resources were exhausted and the same is true of these farming ants. Instead of spending huge quantities of time foraging for food (while under threat of predators), these ants spend time cultivating fungi to eat.

      I’ve given you the what and the why, so now for the how. While humans are sweating in the garden pulling weeds by hand or choking on pesticides, ants actually secret a substance which kills weed molds that have invaded their crops. Along with weeding, these ants also fertilize their fungi to increase their harvest. New research has also found that fungi-growing ants have updated their crops over time. DNA analysis has shown that one species of these ants dates back 12 million years while the fungus they grow is from just 2-3 million years ago. This evidence shows that these ants update their crops over time for maximum benefit, just as humans have done.