In the tropical jungles of the Amazon, there is such a strange ant, they do not eat the leaves directly, but take the leaves from the trees to the nest to ferment, and then eat the mushrooms that grow on them. This is the leafcutter ant, also known as the mushroom ant.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > leafcutter ants can carry 50 times their own weight</h1>
The food processing process for leafcutter ants is interesting. The largest worker ants leave their nests to search for their favorite plant leaves, using their knife-sharp teeth to cause the teeth to vibrate like a chainsaw through the rapid vibration of the tail, cutting the leaves off a crescent-shaped slice. At the same time, they signal other worker ants to join the saw blade. The worker ant who cut a leaf returned to the nest carrying the "fruits of his labor". They can walk 180 meters per minute, which is equivalent to a person carrying 220 kilograms of things, running at a speed of 12 kilometers per minute, which shows the amazing speed and physical strength.
Their power is truly staggering, and this is partly due to the physical makeup of leaf-cutting ants. Leafcutter ants have 3 pairs of vertebrae, while Acromyrmex leafcutter ants have four pairs (leafcutter ants are divided into Atta and Acromyrmex). They use the muscles at the jaw and the mandible to cut off the leaves. The small broken leaves on the back of leafcutter ants weigh close to 3 times their own weight, but these ants can carry 50 times their own weight.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > leafcutter ants to grow fungi from organic matter such as insect carcasses or plant debris</h1>
In the nest, smaller worker ants cut the leaves into small pieces and then cut them into a pulp and pour feces on top, other worker ants paste the fertile slurry on a layer of dried leaves in another cave, and some workers move the fungus from the old cave little by little and plant it on the leaf pulp. The fungus spread like a fog above, and a large group of dwarf ants manages the fungal garden.
For leafcutter ants, fungi have very important implications for them
It can be said that it is their life-saving grass, so they pay great attention to the care and cultivation of fungi. Leafcutter ants grow fungi from organic matter such as insect carcasses or plant debris. They hang the fungus on top of the cave and "fertilize" it with caterpillar droppings.
The management of the fungus garden is very serious, especially those soldier ants who specialize in guarding work, they dare not leave an inch, for fear of foreign ants entering the house and stealing. Once they find the uninvited guests, they are brave and fierce, and they fight with the invaders to the death. Because of this property, they have also become a good helper for Guyana Indian surgeons when performing suture surgery. These indigenous doctors first matched the patient's wound, then manipulated the soldier ant to "suture" with its jaws, and then cut off the ant body, leaving the ant head to act as a sheep intestine line, suturing the wound very tightly.
How do leaf-cutting mushrooms survive? As early as the queen ant marriage flight, the mother's strain was hidden in the depression in her mouth, and then, after creating her own home, after a certain scale, she began to open a mushroom garden by the worker ants.
There are medium, small and 3 kinds of worker ants in the nest, and the big worker ants undertake the task of protecting the family and generally do not go out. Medium-sized worker ants, with long legs and suitable for climbing trees, use their large jaws to cut off the leaves and transport them back to the moving hole. After the leaves are transported to the nest, they are made into a seedbed of awards by small worker ants. Sow the spores on the seedbed first, and when the spores grow into hyphae, transplant the hyphae. The hyphae grow rapidly, and soon small spheroids appear at the apex, which are excellent bait for feeding young and queen ants.
Different leafcutter ant seedbed preparation and cultivation methods, this behavior has a certain learning, it can be seen that the intelligence of leafcutter ants is higher than that of ordinary ants, higher than that of ordinary insects.
Field management of leafcutter ants is also important, and in order to prevent overbreeding of hyphae, small worker ants remove some hyphae from time to time. Sometimes because the number of small worker ants is not enough, hyphal flooding is difficult to stop, which will cause the destruction of the entire ant hole, so that the larvae suffocate to death. Therefore, once this mycelium "crazy" disaster is about to occur, the worker ants have to abandon their homes with the queen and the young ants. Abandoned mushroom fields soon grow many weeds.
In Argentina, a leaf-cutting ant, Atta vollemweideri, grows mushrooms not in their nests, but at the mouth of the cave, and, moreover, there is only one giant mushroom with a cap diameter of 30-40 cm and weighs about three kilograms, which is the only source of nutrition for its owner
In mature leaf-cutting ant colonies, ants are divided into different positions, mostly based on their size, and have different divisions of labor. The Atta and Acromyrmex communities exhibit a high degree of biomorphic diversity, with four morphologies of ants forming their community structures, which are mini, small, medium, and large, and large, and large ants are generally considered soldier ants. Atta is more diverse than Acromyrmex, which means that ants have more species of body shape differentiation.
Mini ants are the smallest worker ants, responsible for caring for the eggs and nursery, with a head width of less than 1 mm.
Small ants are slightly larger than mini ants and are the most abundant type of medium-sized ants responsible for guarding the collection of food. When attacked by the enemy, they are at the forefront of resistance, preventing the enemy from attacking the nest or collecting food ants. The head width is about 1.8-2.2 mm.
Medium-sized ants are the main collecting ants, cutting leaves and carrying leaf fragments back to their nests.
Large ants are the largest type, serving as soldier ants to protect their nests from invasion, and there is evidence that large ants are involved in other activities, such as clearing roads to carry food, removing stones that stand in the way, removing garbage pressed onto nests, and so on. The large ant body is about 16 mm long and 7 mm wide.
Their body size is highly differentiated, but also shows the degree of advancement of their community evolution, and each ant has an independent division of labor, which is a highly evolved manifestation. For example, mini ants will lie on the cut leaves, medium ants will carry the leaves back to the nest, and mini ants will protect the transport process from attack. In the process of "free riding", mini ants also have to check whether the leaves are contaminated, and add certain antibiotics to the leaves to prevent contamination by mold, of course, they will suck up a few mouthfuls of sap as food in the process. All this indicates that they have the social habit of division of labor.
Leafcutter ants are very special species that have co-evolved with other species. This process took place 50 million years ago, when these ants relied on plants for food (References, 1996). At that time, the bacteria of the genus lacked the ability to produce spores, so ants used them as their main food. This is just a guess, leafcutter ants have preserved the strain for more than 25 million years, which means they have been passing on the bacteria for so many years. Leafcutter ants have a special habit of breeding mushrooms, they are not distinguished as other exclusive ants, but are considered to be closer to harvest ants.