Grand News Nature Fans!
Your pal Gordie is here to tell you some hella great news:
THE FIRST EPISODE OF THE FRICK, I LOVE NATURE PODCAST IS NOW LIVE!
What’s it about? Glad you asked!
The Frick podcast is all about answering our burning questions about nature, questions nobody else has ever thought to ask. Questions like: “Do animals have best friends?”, “What makes for a good animal daddy?”, and “Does poo taste good to animals that eat it?”
How do we answer these questions? By inviting real-life natural history experts with real PhDs and years of experience to explain it to us!
In this first episode, we interviewed our dear friend Dr. Aaron Fairweather. Aaron is an ant expert extraordinaire and with some big ol' politics going on this week, that got us wondering: do ants vote on what happens in their colony?
The answer might surprise you!
Go have a tasty little listen to the episode right now. It’s on Spotify and Apple and anywhere else you get your podcasts. If you like it, give us a 5-star review and leave a comment to help us grow the show.
Heck, give us a 5-star review even if you don’t like it yah butt!
JUICY ANIMAL FACTS: ANT AGRICULTURE EDITION
Fact #1: Ants keep aphids as a food source!
No, they don’t eat them (well, sometimes they do), instead, they tickle their aphids’ butts with their antenna. The stimulation causes the aphids to release a sweet booty liquid, which the ant then gobbles up, yum yum. You may know this fact already, but what you might not know is how common aphid domestication truly is. Research has shown that 25% of all aphid species are affected by ant domestication. That’s ONE THOUSAND different types of aphids! And that’s just the aphids we know about… For comparison, humans have domesticated fewer than 500 animal species. We really should pick up our game, on second thought, maybe not.
Fact #2: All 55 species of leafcutter ants are fungus farmers!
These shroom-loving ladies use chopped-up vegetation to cultivate and farm fungus in their nests. The domesticated fungus serves as a food source for their larvae. Even crazier? Some of these ants have even altered the course of evolution for their fungal friends. Millions of years of farming have caused their fungi to stop producing spores and start producing more nutrients! Wowza!
Fact #3: It’s not just fungus and aphids, in 2023 researchers discovered that ants can ALSO cultivate plants!
Shut the front door, ants in Fiji have been found to intentionally plant and harvest specific species of flora. Is it for food? Sometimes! But even more important than food is shelter! By growing a specific kind of plant, these ants can ensure they have enough nesting space in the overloaded tropical housing market.
Well, I planted an acorn in some wet dirt 10 years ago. Pretty soon you'll be watching your boy living tree-side with the squirrels and butt-sucking aphid ants.
BONUS LINKS
Want to learn more about ant agriculture? Willing to read super-sciencey articles?
You can read about how ants evolved to cultivate plants here and then you can learn about how ants have ALSO domesticated some species of butterfly. Crazy, right?
That’s all for our first newsletter. Now go listen to our first episode! Here is the Spotify link again. GO FORTH AND SPREAD THE WORD!
Thanks for reading and we appreciate the heck out of you Natureinos!
– Much Love Gordo