In a world where ants colonize fungus for food, there's one fungus that fights back...

@HeatherSaltas

Жыл бұрын

Said in the ultimate movie trailer voice 😂

@MrNeboff

Жыл бұрын

Wow. Poetic justice

@jancukasu

Жыл бұрын

it goes full circle.

@Pooks8

Жыл бұрын

Karma

@johnelliott7850

Жыл бұрын

Nearly. There are hundreds of species of fungus that fight back - on many species of ant, though carpenter ants seem to get more than their share of attacks.

"None of them effect people so dont worry" The opening line to every sci fi horror

@gaywizard2000

Жыл бұрын

affect

@luisaugustobonilha8210

Жыл бұрын

In fact, que don't need "fungus" at all, we haver relógios, mídia, entertainement, etc....

@SilverAlienMachine

Жыл бұрын

😂🤣😂

@Qwnntm

Жыл бұрын

The Last of Us show opening be like:

@alexandertheresurrection2810

Жыл бұрын

@@Qwnntm that first episode was awesome

I feel like wasps that parasitize caterpillars, spiders, etc. are a closer match to xenomorphs, but either way the comparison is fun.

@kingjellybean9795

Жыл бұрын

Watch out for waspes

@ozarkecologies

Жыл бұрын

That would be a great topic for this video. Parasitoid wasps are likely the most diverse group of animals on the planet.

@iamjakt

Жыл бұрын

Ichnumenon fly!

@TheSaneHatter

Жыл бұрын

For the record, those wasps were a direct influence on the concept, and the recent "Prometheus" films acknowledge this, showing them as having contrubuted to the Xenomorphs' genetic engineering by David.

@syafiqjabar

Жыл бұрын

One prehistoric parasitic wasp was is even named Xenomorpha

Never thought I'd feel such sympathy for an ant.

@marlo018

Жыл бұрын

You should watch "Ants Canada". Go to his channel and be ready to become an Ant Ally 🤣

@gary4689

Жыл бұрын

I feel bad for the fungus, to undergo such strong selective pressures as to push a fungus to hijack something so complex as the nervous system of a living animal. Imagine how big a population size would be needed to make such specific and complex adaptions. 99.9% probably didn't make it.

@kentajin7860

Жыл бұрын

@@marlo018 i just discovered this channel because of you today, and the channel could make feel in love with Ants easily!

@nelsonvenema3614

Жыл бұрын

If you want to feel even more ant sympathy Ant-Man is a good movie to go to

@DunantheDefender

Жыл бұрын

The zombie ants or the ass-blasted ant?

"So what do we do?" "Bomb"...

"All the ants wanted was to keep their colony clean and instead they got zombies." Pretty much the best line in all your videos! Bravo! Much better than "camerosaurus"

@milesdyson5211

Жыл бұрын

I know they are just Ant's but they are Life, it's sad to see this happen to any living being. Just think this weaponised from Biolabs. Hint we had one round of it already, not to mention, Gates said another one is coming but worse. ( BE CARFULL OF THE EXPERIMENTS YOUR FORCED TO COMPLY WITH, YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE ) You were ALL Warned since 1995 and again in 2005

@MarkWTK

Жыл бұрын

I think it's hard to come up with an original pun 😅 so I'll give that camerosaurus joke a little credit 😆

@simoncleret

Жыл бұрын

I am legend, ant edition

@marygo1278

Жыл бұрын

@@simoncleret be p ok lkkkk kiooooooooooooooojjooooooooo

One theory is the endothermy ("warmbloodedness") developed because of fungus. Of the tens of thousands of species of fungi, only about 300 infect mammals. Since the vast majority of fungi can't tolerate 98 degrees, endothermy acts as excellent anti-fungal weapon.

@kayyyp4939

Жыл бұрын

So interesting!!

@jamesknapp64

Жыл бұрын

And it would explain why it happened twice convergently, with both birds and mammals.

@pol.86

Жыл бұрын

Interesting theory, but maybe not just fungi, I would think other pathogens like viruses and bacteria would be included as well. For example: Bats not being affected by many of the pathogens they carry because of their high metabolic rate. Or the immune response giving us fevers to reduce the activity of whatever infection we have.

@scottmccrea1873

Жыл бұрын

@@pol.86 yessir. We should also try to understand why, despite the fungal assault, the pokilothermic reptiles & amphibians (not to mention insects) keep on truckin'.

@sabkobds

Жыл бұрын

I am sure any mammal would almost boil at 98 degrees (C of course)... 😁 You are probably talking F, but if we are talking science, SI (or metric system) is what's implied when you say 98. Human body temperature is about 37°C normally. 100 is boiling point of water (on see level attitude).

I've always wondered how something so complex such as this behavior evolved.

@julianshepherd2038

Жыл бұрын

Your brain fungus will never let you find out or anyone else.

@WanderTheNomad

Жыл бұрын

@@julianshepherd2038 It's more of a slime mold than a fungus. Uhh I mean.... It's absolutely ridiculous to imply that there's anything controlling us! 😠

@BoxStudioExecutive

Жыл бұрын

@@WanderTheNomad fun fact: myxomatosis-like thing is a thing also found in humans and monkeys, likely to make primates more susceptible to being food for lions in the same way it acts on mice and cats.

@jus7040

Жыл бұрын

@@BoxStudioExecutive sounds a little like toxoplasmosis, Toxoplasma Gondii.

@Dragrath1

Жыл бұрын

Probably in stages one commonality between arthropod infecting fungi is that they all produce psychedelic compounds such as psilocybin. These aren't exclusive to cordyceps like fungi but all such fungi have such chemical compounds. Psychedelic compounds appear to have evolved convergently many times within fungi lineages that are under a strong competition with insects for resources suggesting they play an important defensive role. However in a subset of fungi which have such compounds some seems to have been readapted for offensive use

Wow, that fossil is amazing! A moment in time shared by animal, fungi, and plant

@ajpimpsall

Жыл бұрын

right?! I know they need to use click bait titles to get views/funding, but the actual science and fossil evidence they bring on this channel is just impressive as hell. Imagine all the documentation and expertise there has to have been done in human history to get to point to make the deductions that this rock pattern shows that some ants, from unfathomably long ago, had a mass suicide event since they were essentially brainwashed. Amazing.

Death by butt fungus was not on my list of things I wanted to learn right before bed. But now I know that we over here in Germany 50 Million Years ago had the same weather Thailand has now. I also love the Alien reference. Dying by Alien having breakfast does not sound better than dying by fungus, but a lot more bloody.

Everyone summon Ants Canada.

@2forked737

Жыл бұрын

Ants Canada friend 👍🏻👍🏻

@crocowithaglocko5876

Жыл бұрын

@AntsCanada we need you bro

@danielfulmer7650

Жыл бұрын

He does have a great channel. I enjoy his content.

@gradipadia9800

Жыл бұрын

Also... Summon the Senate!

@harukatakahashi8822

Жыл бұрын

AntsCanada: Please subscribe to my channel, hit the bell icon, welcome to the AC family, enjoy:)

I like what you did at the end when you said ' The Last of Us' - for those who don't get it, and I imagine there won't be many who don't, The Last of Us is a zombie survival game that came out in 2013, and the thing that turned people into zombies or the infected, was a mutated Cordyceps fungus like what infects ants! A sequel The Last of Us Part II that came out in 2020, and a show adaptation is being made about the first game by HBO. Both games did extremely well, and many call The Last Of Us one of the best zombie games, and even video games of all time, and that is for many reasons including the fact that it is based on a fungus that is very real. This was a great video!

@bujkaizack

Жыл бұрын

Amazing games, really enjoyed the last fight with Abby. They did waste half the game trying to get me to empathize with her tho. I won’t say I didn’t enjoy playing through her part of the game. I didn’t mind dying as her as much as I did playing as Ellie, I felt like she deserved it more, lol. RIP Joel

@CLBrierley

Жыл бұрын

@@bujkaizack the story was brilliant. So powerful.

@jevvir

Жыл бұрын

Just to clarify, they are called infected, not zombies, so it's not a zombie game. It still is the best game out there, specially part I, which also has a killer multiplayer, with quite an active player base. The last of us part I single player mode will get a new remake this fall.

@CLBrierley

Жыл бұрын

@@jevvir that’s why I said or the infected. The games are in the same as zombies just with their own twist. I hope they make another game.

@wyrmh0le

Жыл бұрын

@@CLBrierley Yeah it's a zombie game just like The Walking Dead is a zombie show even though they never call them zombies. ;)

He actually made a Last of Us pun in a video about zombies. Well played.

@zddxddyddw

Жыл бұрын

About zombifying fungi no less!

@chumuheha

Жыл бұрын

Cordyceps is literally the fungus from the games lmao

What's amazing is that someone found ant bite marks on a fossilized leaf.

@kyetes.866

Жыл бұрын

Imagine the attention to detail required

Blake is hands down the best pbs eons host, dude just makes me laugh

@georgemurdock7670

Жыл бұрын

And more educated

@marksmangalactic9050

Жыл бұрын

I like them all for their different quirks 😊

@reeyees50

Жыл бұрын

Big Daddy Blake

@lonestarr1490

Жыл бұрын

@@marksmangalactic9050 Absolutely. The only channel with more than two hosts I know of where I like all of the hosts.

@OleanderSmoothie

Жыл бұрын

I enjoy each of the hosts for their different narration styles but something about Blake's zeal for the puns is especially enjoyable

Ants sanitize each other, destroy/remove dead bodies, and kill those already infected. Sounds a lot like the QZ zone in the last of us. Though it can be cruel, an effective strategy when there are zombies running around.

We do actually know a bit about the mechanisms by which Ophiocordyceps fungi hijack ants and its actually quite a bit more terrifying than direct behavioral manipulation since it turns out that the fungi largely avoids interacting with the ants nervous system instead blocking the ants brains ability to signal to control its muscles and rather directly triggering its own action potential signals to supplant control. So it is much better described as puppeteering the ant. Granted it takes time for the fungus to grow to be able to achieve that effect so behavioral manipulation is probably necessary to get to the puppeteering stage. That said we do know a bit about that too and interestingly enough it involves a molecule called psilocybin. Psilocybin or an equivalent psychedelic compound appears to be a prerequisite for direct animal parasitism by fungi i.e. there are fungi which aren't parasitic which produce psychedelics but there are no direct parasitic fungi (we are discounting opportunistic infections of the skin or orifices as the fungus isn't acting as a coordinated multicellular organism) which do not produce psychedelics. Psychedelics themselves appear to be a much more general product of convergent evolution which interestingly enough appears to likely have arisen as a defensive weapon against insects by disorienting them as they attack the fungus or directly compete for resources(decomposing plant material). For more on this topic I recommend reading Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

@ProfessorPesca

Жыл бұрын

Really informative and interesting comment, thanks for the book recommendation too.

@WilliamDye-willdye

Жыл бұрын

Take note, sci-fi horror writers: fungal-type zombification does not take over your brain. It's much worse. Your mind is alert, coherent, and utterly horrified; perhaps with only enough control to scream at your friends that you can't stop, as your body carefully tills the soil to optimize conditions for the next planting cycle.

@Reticulosis

Жыл бұрын

Your comment deserves more thumbs up, really informative comment.

@reversegoat3260

Жыл бұрын

I second the book recommendation. An excellent book, to learn more about fungi.

@unadulterated

Жыл бұрын

interesting comment but no way did someone call their kid "Merlin Sheldrake"

It's fascinating how ants' behaviour helps them, most of the time, to avoid the spread of diseases within the colony. Our film crew managed to shoot an incredible ant colony work where they carried leaves to their nest together, but in this case, they were seeking the fungus. Zombie ants, maybe? Not in this case; they actually use the fungus as nourishment. Thanks for the video!

Since ants love stealing and eating competitors’ larvae I can definitely see the chance of contamination

I've heard about these Zombie Ants about ten thousand times and I just have one question... What has nobody made a B-movie with rubber suited zombie-ant people in it yet? COME ON PEOPLE.

@telltellyn

Жыл бұрын

One of the most famous video games ever made is all about cordyceps infecting humans, so it's kind of been done.

@tyrannosaurusflex3698

Жыл бұрын

Ahh yes I know the game! Sonic the Hedgehog is one my all time faves

@TragoudistrosMPH

Жыл бұрын

The Girl with All the Gifts is a A tier movie that really did a related idea well :)

@patreekotime4578

Жыл бұрын

There was a classic X-Files episode based on this.

@jevvir

Жыл бұрын

@@telltellyn and it will have tv series out soon

Eons: I know what you're thinking... Me: The last of us? E: That's right, Xenomorphs from Alien! Me: 😐

I think the most scary part I've heard about this is that the fungi just goes for the muscles as a means of control and energy resources, so the nerves are left for last. So the ant at some point tries to do something, and due to the infection, it can't control its body

This has to be one of the coolest channels on KZread.. it's topics are always interesting, yet the research and preparation are still very well done. Great presentation!!

Ah, I see it's time for an Eons take on Cordyceps. Great to hear a more in-depth evolutionary take on it for once.

There are cordyceps within human environments. They are called "manipulative people"

For those wondering, no, Cordyceps cannot infect humans because our nervous systems are far too complex for them to infect. Also, each species of Cordyceps has evolve to infect only a specific species of insect. For example, a Cordyceps that has evolved to infect an ant species from Thailand can't infect an ant species from Florida

@bmobutdope9316

Жыл бұрын

And it too warm

@bmobutdope9316

Жыл бұрын

They can only infect things that are 70-80 degrees anything higher is instant death

@bmobutdope9316

Жыл бұрын

The average human body temp is 90s

8:04 I admire your restraint in withholding that reference until the end.

These videos are so well done. The background music, the images, the three original hosts. I even love the sound effects when an image comes up. Bravo!

So research has been done to figure out exactly how the bugs are controlled. (November 8, 2017), researchers at Penn State University released new information in regards to this. They found the fungus grow in between the muscle fibers ans it allows them to control the movements. No fungal matter was found in the brain of the ant so they speculate that the ants are just watching their bodies go into autopilot.

I got that reference! Best game ever made!!

@Freedeeism

Жыл бұрын

Tlou

"The Last of Us" is real. For the ants, of course. It is unfortunate for them. We should count ourselves lucky that the fungus didn't evolve to infect humans. Yet. 🍄🐜

@Zaxares

Жыл бұрын

That's what I was thinking too. XD Blake: "But don't worry, they haven't evolved to infect us humans." Me: "YET."

@Zaxares

Жыл бұрын

@@MurdogYT Yeah, the odds of it somehow mutating to infect us are incredibly, INCREDIBLY small. It doesn't mean it COULDN'T happen (weirder cosmic probabilities HAVE happened), but yeah, I think the odds of something like you winning the Powerball lottery 10 times in a row is still higher than cross-Order disease infections.

@RedRocket4000

Жыл бұрын

@@MurdogYT So far no modern strain of Rabies has developed that can control humans like it does the other mamales it takes over. Rabies makes the victims ingnore survival and go out to bite as many animals as possible but not kill them as it wants to make Rabies virus in the new host. Legdend has humans having the same behavior but it has never been observed in humans but recent brain reasrch showing even more complexity to the human brain and how the human brain has cheats to work massively faster than all other animals means the low amount of DNA rabies virus has no answer for taking over the much more complex human all though it does kill humans dead but those humans don't normaly spreed the virus.

@KoeSeer

Жыл бұрын

until you read in the paper headline "massive crops and food product recalls by FDA due to mold infestation"

When someone deciphers how a fungus can manipulate a host's behaviour, that's when Umbrella becomes a real threat.

Can't wait for you guys to come back! Enjoy the break, Thank you for everything you guys are doing !

I love this host he has so much charisma

Love you guys! Keep making amazing content, we appreciate it!

Those images of bugs with fuzzy spikes of fungus growing out of them seriously always give me an empty cold feeling...some sickly feeling of primeval horror. It's mild of course, but it feels ancient and just deeply wrong

Freaking love this channel and you guys. Thanks for making nerdy science fun and adorable. And omg, the outtakes! More please. Have a great vacation.

Ah yes, the cordyceps fungus. One variant for just about every insect that gets too apex or overpopulated it seems. Amazing fungus. I cultivated cordyceps that attacked blow flys and got it so prevalent that there were thousands of moldy looking flies in my garden all zombified in their underleaf death grips. I played with humidifiers and temperatures, lighting and air flow. Lots of notes! I truly managed to improve the cordyceps life. I hope it enjoyed our time together.

@FloozieOne

Жыл бұрын

I wish I had a fly cordceps in a miniature potted tree in my house to control the multiple fly swarms that appear in summer although I have no idea how they get in through tightly closed windows. One day last summer I got 32 of them in one hour's swatting but it wasn't all of them and since most of them crawl around on the window panes (they want out when they first wanted in - go figure) it makes for gross fly-gut covered windows.

@emmanueladdo743

Жыл бұрын

Yes...!! Two villain scientists getting together to destroy the world accidentally...

This was a really cool video! When you get back, can you please bring it a video that follows the evolution of snails and slugs?? I've been asking for the for a while now 🥺😍

@libraryofpangea7018

Жыл бұрын

If you click on my profile & head over to my playlist library, I have the largest Malacology ( study of mollusks) resource on youtube which includes videos on gastropod ( snails, semi snails & slugs) evolution.

The Last of Ants

6:23 I swear that stock footage must be incorrectly labeled "ants" because i have seen it in a ton of nature videos and they always get it wrong because those are in fact termites not ants.

@michaelcreek3813

Жыл бұрын

Well, at that point they are talking about social insects in general an not specifically ants.

@CMZneu

Жыл бұрын

@@michaelcreek3813 Look it's not like it completely out of place or anything but i'm pretty sure the editor thought it was a video of ants, it's an honest mistake since that species of termite have darkened exoskeleton to protect from the sun because they have similar foraging behavior to ants, termites are usually much more reclusive. Besides in that part they have already mentioned ants and proceed to show 3/4 videos of ants.

keep up the videos!! love seeing new ones pop up :)) always a pleasure

The images of those fungus infected ant corpses always get me! Great video!

another interesting tidbit, we use fungus similar to this during organ donation/organ transplant operations, because in humans these types of fungi are useful for their ability to suppress the immune system and prevent the body from having an immune response to the removal/addition of organs

@TragoudistrosMPH

Жыл бұрын

Which and which country. I was in the industry and didn't hear of this. I'm curious :)

Blake's reactions are just so... so adorable!

I had to be trusting to watch yet another video about zombie ants and you did not disappoint.

Now I need for someone to make animated ants movie, but it's zombie horror.

Watching this makes me want to rethink everything, I would love to catch and observe these guys all day.

The reference to the video game series was brilliant. I see what you did there and love it.

Man you are the GOAT. Xenomorph reference, The Last of Us Reference, and super geeky postscript. Well done.

This the channel I love every host! All of you are so charismatic and fun! 💙💛

02:28 Such a precision mechanism. The ants are sent to die at a specific time of day and height off the ground. Nature inexorably executes.

Omg! My AP Research project was about this exact thing! Glad you guys are covering it :)

Never knew ants have complex evolved health protocol

(i) climb 2m (ii) go to underside of leaf (iii) grip and hold (iii) die at midday: .... that is a fairly complex instruction set for a simple fungus! It would be fascinating to understand how it does it.

Many fungus are hallucinogenic, so they evolved to modify the behavior of the animals eating them.

I’m sure there was an episode of the X Files where humans get infected with a fungus and it erupts out of their throats. It scared the crap out of me as a 12 year old.

one of my greatest fears... cordyceps fungus figuring out how to penetrate the mammalian blood brain barrier.

If Umbrella decided to make zombies by using fungi spores, how screwed is humanity?

i love this channel so much. one of my favorites!

There's a cool documentary about mushrooms that goes over this process on Netflix. It's really fascinating! I had no idea that fungi were used as pesticides.

That went from quite stunning to quite horrific to quite stunning again pretty fast.

Anyone else a fungi expert like me after watching "the last of us"?

You guys and girls outdid yourselves. This video is awsome!

I'm here to recommend "The Girl with All the Gifts" if anyone wants a zombie novel based on this idea!

Love the "THE LAST OF US" reference. You're the best!

If the world were to perhaps get warmer...

The infected ants have a song... "Cos I'm dying inside... to fungi..."

This is what I love about Eons -- not just dinosaurs! I mean I love me a dinosaur but there is so much more to learn!

I don't usually post comments on YT videos but your last of us interjection brought me here. Well done y'all. Thanks for all you do.

We'll miss you while Eons is on break! Hope you have a lot of fungis 🤓

awesome timing, Costa Rican Cubes just posted a short video on his channel showing a Cicada, dead, being consumed by most likely by some type of Cordyceps

The Last of Us on HBO brought me here!

Sad that you're going on break for a month. I enjoy the videos a lot.

Happy holidays!

Thank you for an episode about my favorite animal

SUPER fascinating! Scary (for ants), but very cool way to propagate as an adaptive (I want to say) spore/fungus!?!

Cooler than heck y’all! That’s a whole bunch! You’re so damn funny too. Keep it up big dog!

Needs “Death Grips” music in the background. Great video.

Love all these nerdy references and jokes that I entirely got. 👍 Envious about the NOSTROMO flightsuit.

I was expecting an aswer as to how the fungus actually controls the ant's behavior to that degree. It's a very specific set of instructions that certainly didn't come out of nowhere. Usually when other organisms are "zombified" the changes in behavior are pretty simple in comparison (enhanced aggression, inhibitted flight response, etc). I imagine it has to do with ants' instinct to self isolate and move away from the colony when they feel sick and the fungus is just "guiding" them to those specific spots with environmental cues, like light level and the day/night cycle. The part about biting down and holding on to leaves seems less complex.

@NG-VQ37VHR

Жыл бұрын

There were likely many different mutations of the fungus that caused a variety of different chemical cues for the ants. Some that had them do lots of different behaviors. This specific set of behaviors happened to lead to more of this particular fungus being spread than the others and its version of the fungi just outcompeted the rest. It's dumb luck, really. The behaviors that weren't beneficial to the spread of the fungus, didn't reproduce as much and eventually disappeared, leaving only the successful version. And each time a more successful mutation happened, that version is the one that got to take over. Over millions of years, the fungus just gets more and more refined to a very complex set of behaviors.

@iamdanieloliveira

Жыл бұрын

@@NG-VQ37VHR I know this relationship evolved over a long period of time to become what it is today, but evolution has to work on something that was already there, it can't simply create something from nothing. In this case even more so, as the fungus can't create a behavior that wasn't already present in the ants, and the ants certainly didn't evolve new behavior to help the fungus. Usually this type of parasite works in very simple ways, releasing a couple chemicals that inhibit or enhance certain functions of the brain, with the more complex behaviors that result being just what the victim's brain was already wired to do in those circumstances. It doesn't make sense that the fungus would've evolved one external chemical signal to tell the ant to abandon the colony, another to tell it to go find a leaf a certain distance off the ground, another to do it at a certain time of day, etc. The ants must've already had behaviors for these things and the fungus just learned how to exploit them, turning some signals on or off or altering their intensity. What I really wanted to know is what that mechanism was.

@dozermc5220

Жыл бұрын

@@iamdanieloliveira This paper is probably the best explanation you will get for now. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4174324/ In summary, guanidinobutyric acid (GBA) & sphingosines are produced in the ant's brain along with several other as yet unidentified metabolites. GBA is involved in the transport of compounds such as creatine and guanidinoacidic acid (GAA) across the blood-brain barrier and known to be involved in epileptic discharges and convulsions in rodents. Altered levels of creatine and GAA have been shown to cause neurological disorders. Sphingosines are part of sphingolipid metabolism, which affects all types of cell regulation. Defects can lead to cancers and neurological syndromes. Apparently gene exporession in ants is strongly influenced by light and circadian ryhtm, so it's only at certain times of the day that the ant's natural brain chemistry produces whichever metabolite is necessary to interact with the fungal metabolites to trigger the induced behaviour. The death grip involves atrophy of the mandibular muscles leading to a locked jaw.

Another interesting one are the Rhizocephala barnacles (such as Loxothylacus panopaei) that do something similar to crabs and some other crustaceans. Those are probably worth an episode at some point.

Brilliant video!

6:38 Didn't expect to be Jealous of Ant public health adherence... ...humanity...

A month without any episode will feel just like EONS !

This is the first eons that I listened to and couldn't look at the screen. Fascinating but audio only for me. Those pictures were creeping me out. LOL

@mrsupremegascon

Жыл бұрын

Same lol

What was the natural progression of this fungi gaining this ability? I’m sure it didn’t go from “normal” fungal reproduction to reproducing through zombifying insects with no steps in the middle. What were those stepping stones the fungi had to take?

So glad this got scheduled as the last video before a break so y'all could put in that Last of Us reference :D

Great presentation

I have a question at around 6:47, its said that infected ants would be kicked out of the colony or killed. How would a colony of ants kick out another ant? Like mechanically / socially speaking

Have a great summer break! I will miss y'all!

"Colton" - the mysterious Eontologist, the unsung hero of these videos!

Love the "vibe check" that would be a keeper for me. LOL.

You can also see these zombified ants in an episode of Netflix's Our Planet - a great docu-series which I'm sure you lot will love 😊

Anytime someone says "look at the trees" as proof of a deity, just refer them here or to a video on tarantula wasps.

Love these episodes

When you talked about social immunity, I immediately thought about ostracizing.

What a coincidence. I just finished readings "Entangled Life" by Merlin Sheldrake and this same story is told in the book. So watching this episode was like deja vu

That DNA graphic you used is one of those illusions that spins in either direction.

The past three videos I've been like "oh a new Eons video I haven't seen that's odd" and then I realize it's new 😅