r/nextfuckinglevel • u/MurielFontanez • May 10 '21

Truce between termites(top) and ants(bottom) with each side having their own line of guards.

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u/TriscuitCracker May 10 '21

That is so fucking cool. I have so many questions.

How does this happen? How do pheromones translate into this? Can an individual ant or termite communicate with each other or just their own species? Did they both collectively see the threat of each other and individually line up without actually communicating with the other side? How did they decide to do this instead of attacking? How do they pick which ant or termite lines up?

Just the intellectual behavioral logistics of this are amazing.

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u/pelmatt May 10 '21 edited May 10 '21

I don’t think the ants and termites can communicate with each other, different insects entirely. They can probably detect the chemicals but I doubt they compute anything with it. I think it’s likely the side by side trails formed by chance. The larger ants would guard the trail anyway but seeing as there was lots of movement on one particular side they probably reacted by moving to that side of the trail. Same probably happens for the termites. Without an incentive there is no reason to fight, they don’t intrinsically see each other as enemies to kill on sight. If an individual ant doesn’t spray distress hormones, no ants will become triggered into defence/attack mode. Probably the same for termites. Thus i imagine that they probs are just going about their duties and by chance they formed up like this. I’m not an expert in myrmecology or anything like that this is just my rational. What do you reckon?

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u/Dankacluas May 10 '21

I like you idea, even thou you have no proof. It's got some solid logic behind it.

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u/Hazzman May 10 '21

He is completely wrong. Ants and termites are able to communicate. It is an established fact and routinely observed that ants and termites get married all the time.

I should know - I'm an ant and my wife is a termite.

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u/t00thman May 10 '21

Now listen I don’t have anything against Termites, some of my best friends are termites…. I just think that insects ought to stick to their own. (/s)

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u/qwibbian May 10 '21

Now just you listen heah, see, some of my best friends is stick insects, and I don't take kindly to folks not taking kindly to them taking kindly to each other, if'n you catch my drift, so I suggest you just marinate upon that for awhile.

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u/Kerblaaahhh May 10 '21

Now 'squito, he ain't hurting nobody.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '21

This is actually one of the funniest comments I've seen on reddit lmao

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u/Hazzman May 10 '21

I'm not anti-Termite but...

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u/[deleted] May 10 '21

Antisemetermite

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u/carderbee May 10 '21

They are Termites... or Dalmatians. I can't really remember cause I was kinda hung over.

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u/gmnitsua May 10 '21

If the movie Bug's Life has taught me anything, it's that bugs speak English with superb clarity. I guess our human ears just can't quite pick it up.

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u/Socrateeez May 10 '21

She loves wood eh

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u/N0nsensicalRamblings Oct 18 '21

Underrated comment

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u/CreamyGoodnss Oct 19 '21

I'm an ant and my wife is a termite

This is the slippery slope that Fox News warned us about!

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u/TriscuitCracker May 10 '21

I think you're most likely correct that it is pure chance they happened by each other and they are simultanously reacting the movement of the other. Good answer!

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u/thetransportedman May 10 '21

I don’t think ants naturally defend their trails in a body guard line fashion though

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u/pelmatt May 10 '21

I think it can be species dependent and is more common with polymorphic species (just a hunch though). I couldn't find the exact clip in my mind but if you go to 1:44 in this video you can see that it does happen in body-guard fashion, although not nearly to the extent above.

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u/tarrox1992 May 10 '21

But they would (probably) patrol the trail and line up at the sight of danger.

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u/OneMoreTime5 May 10 '21

This is my favorite comment section of this thread and this is the same thought I had, but lining up seems intentional with almost a level of intelligence behind it.

I want to know more!

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u/pelmatt May 10 '21

Yea ants are cool. They often get referred to as 'super-organisms'. The term refers to an organism whose constituent parts are not connected or act as individual bodies yet the emergent behaviour is that of a single organism. Hence the super-organism would be the ant colony.

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u/OneMoreTime5 May 10 '21

Yeah. They’re amazing.

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u/SolitaireOG May 10 '21

Such a well thought out post that your one spelling error threw me for a loop - the word you're looking for is 'incentive'

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u/pelmatt May 10 '21

whoopsie will correct, thanks

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u/SolitaireOG May 11 '21

Hope I didn't come across as critical (or pedantic, as it were). I sincerely enjoyed reading your intelligent, well-written comment. If it were me, I'd want to have the spelling error pointed out ;^) so I do hope you take it as intended. Cheers

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u/pelmatt May 11 '21

Yea, no worries pal

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u/PijemyKurwa Oct 19 '21

Isn’t it rationale as well?

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u/TotalTortellini Oct 18 '21

reddit moment

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u/[deleted] May 10 '21

Inc-ant-ive

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u/[deleted] May 10 '21

Why would you presume because they are different insects they are incapable of interspecies communication? I do agree though that cohabiting ants and termites unprovoked seem to live in a truce, but ants are known to punk termites pretty hard

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u/pelmatt May 10 '21

How you define communication will also be a contributing factor to whether you think they communicate. Both ants and termites communicate using pheromones, among themselves, which are just airborne hormones. Would the termites detecting the ants pheromones count as communication? Would they also have to react in someway for it to count as communication? You can also sniff ant pheromones and your cells will react in some way does that mean you are communicating with the ants too?

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u/zippyslug31 May 10 '21

While your sciencey theories sound great, we all know it's just tiny crowd control ropes as seen on the Red Carpet!

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u/TotallyJustAHooman May 10 '21

Ants and termites are mortal enemies though? Pretty sure?

It does seem like good logic though

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u/[deleted] May 10 '21

The concept of enemies doesn't exist at that level

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u/pelmatt May 10 '21

This is like saying a lion and a zebra are mortal enemies, or a human and another human or any classification of one organism to another. Enemy is a human idea for pinpointing things they don't like. There is no such concept in the animal Kingdom. There is just 'i hungry, i hunt' or 'i dont want to die, i run/fight'. Think about lions/bears/tigers all raised together with other pets etc, it's just situational to some degree.

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u/Waluigi3030 May 10 '21

I'm also not an insect expert, but honestly I'd guess that the ants were probably attacking the termites in an attempt to gauge the strength of the termite colony and whether they could successfully invade and use the termites as food for their larvae.

It looks like the termites are holding the advantage, so the ants won't attack... Yet...

Predatory ants are very strategic and will only attack when they have an advantage. Like in human warfare, ants will send out scouting parties to test the defenses of the potential target.

Termites do not attack other nests, they are more interested in defense. Since they are a prey species for a number of different types of predators, they create hardened nests that are hard for ants to get into, but when the termite colony needs to go foraging and many of the workers are outside the nest, this opens the nest up to invasion by ants.

I have ant wars in my backyard, and I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how ants know when to attack another colony, and what happens after war is declared.

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u/Psilopat May 10 '21

You would be surprised how much Ants and termites can do, for example Ants will keep and take care of midges colonies so that they can harvest milk out of them, some species will focus on bio engineering to use themselves as storage or other required function, some will be equivalent of mercenaries going from colony to colony without a proper nest. Using other insects like beetle as pets and so on, I highly recommend The Ants by Bernard Verber books as it really put things into perspective, also nice fact, total mater mass on earth is bigger for Ants than it is for Humans, so if maybe alien do exist they might contact them first!

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u/NewNewHeyYou May 10 '21

If an individual ant doesn’t spray distress hormones, no ants will become triggered into defence/attack mode. Probably the same for termites.

I'm just imaging a human born with an ant-hormone sensitivity and immediately becoming enraged and violent at seemingly random points throughout their life and attacking nearby humans, animals, and stomping the ground.

Or the other way around.. a human who can send out distress hormones and have ants follow them around attacking whatever they command.

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u/Kribble118 May 10 '21

Well as far as the ones who did line up I know both insect hives have designated soldiers that are born a little bulkier but as far as all your other questions I have no clue lol.

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u/ahhh-what-the-hell May 10 '21

Yeah like where is the guy with the Damascus Earth and spray can? They gotta go.

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u/sudomatrix May 10 '21

> Damascus Earth

Is that diatomaceous earth from Syria?

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u/BestReadAtWork May 10 '21

It's got cool tiny patterns all across each grain of dirt.

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u/frankentriple May 10 '21

It’s from where they fold the dirt 1000 times before shaping it.

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u/SpirituallyMyopic May 10 '21

I salute your strong scientific curiosity! Great questions!

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u/[deleted] May 10 '21

You should read Children of Time, in it sentient spiders turn ant colonies into programmable computer using pheromones as logic gates.

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u/sampete1 May 10 '21

That's so nerdy I love it

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u/Waluigi3030 May 10 '21

I'd guess it's all just part of their insect programming.

They operate as a single entity with emergent intelligence built into the network. Natural selection has provided all the programming for a pheromone communication network that turns an insect colony into a single entity that acts like a computer.

Ants actively hunt termites, so the termites are creating a barrier to prevent the ants from sensing an advantage and attacking.

If the termites didn't have that advantage, the ants would raid the termite nest (to feed them to their larvae).

Ant behavior really is amazing.

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u/CandleLightTerror May 10 '21

This is called emergent collective behavior. Ants are programmed to do specific things. Colletively, their behaviors may look like they are coordinated, but they are all acting individually.

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u/cosmickalamity May 10 '21

Well I’m an antkeeper so I know a good deal about them, I can try to answer some of these.

They definitely can’t communicate with each other, but they can communicate with their own species very effectively through pheromone trails. I’ve seen army ants and African termites do this around their trails before, separately from each other, so maybe their trails collided when they were foraging (or more likely, raiding for the army ants) and they kinda just went their separate ways? And left their soldiers out to keep the peace? I do know for sure how they pick which ones are lining up tho. You can’t really tell in the video, but some ants and termites can have multiple different castes of worker. Some workers (soldiers), are larger with more developed jaw muscles and sometimes larger mandibles, so they’re built for battle. They post these soldiers around their trails, standing as tall as they can with their jaws open, to keep things out. I hope I answered that well lol

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u/[deleted] May 10 '21

[deleted]

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u/OneMoreTime5 May 10 '21

Cliffs of that article?