Fire ants floating for survival
BBC Earth Podcast
Jenkins Laura
4.6 • 611 Ratings
🗓️ 19 January 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We're exploring what the natural world can teach us about teamwork. We'll learn how in some of the most remote locations and harshest conditions, strength can come in numbers.
In the Amazon rainforests in Northern Peru, tiny creatures have found an ingenious way to tackle the annual floods. With the help of a crew member from the landmark series, A Perfect Planet, we'll be floating alongside fire ants forming a living raft.
Tens of thousands of penguins make the journey from the sea to a spot in the Antarctic to breed. For them, sticking together is crucial for surviving such harsh conditions.
Finally, we'll hear about slime mould. To prevent starving, genetically different strains of slime mould come together. But within this system exist loners. What can they teach us about the evolution of social behaviours?
Thank you for listening to another series of the BBC Earth podcast.
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To find out more about David Attenborough’s stunning natural world series, A Perfect Planet, visit the BBC Earth website: bbcearth.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from BBC Studios. |
| 0:03.9 | BBC Studios. |
| 0:05.9 | A commercial subsidiary of the BBC. |
| 0:14.6 | So it was in northern Peru and it's this incredible pristine piece of Amazonia, |
| 0:24.9 | completely untouched. |
| 0:28.6 | We arrived in the flood and the waters were rising just as we got there |
| 0:32.4 | and it was amazing. Suddenly, very quickly, everything was completely inundated and there was no dry land |
| 0:38.7 | in sight. It's really, really beautiful in the peak of the flood. You get this incredible, |
| 0:46.2 | deep, inky, black water. It's just this very ethereal world. It's bonkers. It kind of feels alien. |
| 0:56.7 | Welcome to the BBC Earth podcast, the podcast that's always on the lookout for signs of approaching danger. |
| 1:03.5 | You start the story with a single fire ant scout detecting the rising water levels |
| 1:09.2 | and coming back to his colony to alert the army to what was happening. |
| 1:14.6 | In this episode, we're taking lessons on teamwork from the natural world. |
| 1:18.6 | We're discovering the wisdom of crowds and finding that when you really want to get things done, |
| 1:23.6 | it makes sense to work together. |
| 1:25.6 | We start deep in the leaf litter, right down in the soil, in the Amazon rainforest in Peru. |
| 1:31.3 | The yearly floodwaters are rising fast. |
| 1:34.3 | We're in the company of a colony of fire ants, and we're about to witness them perform a truly extraordinary act of teamwork. |
| 1:41.3 | You'd first see a kind of trickle of two or three ants, |
| 1:46.4 | and they'd suddenly go into kind of panic mode, |
| 1:48.2 | and they'd start moving really, really quickly. |
| 1:50.7 | And at that point, hundreds would come out, |
... |
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