Tooth and Claw: Army ant

Discovery

BBC

Science

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 March 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The army ant might be small enough to squash under foot but, make no mistake, it’s a formidable predator. When they club together in their thousands they are a force to be reckoned with. Picture a tiger, comprised of hundreds of thousands of tiny ant-sized units, prowling through the forest and you start to get the idea. They’ll take down anything in their path, from spiders and scorpions to chickens that can’t escape them. There are even grisly stories of African army ants attacking people. But this predator has its uses too - they can be used to stitch wounds and offer a house cleaning service too.

Dr Dino Martins, Executive Director of the Mpala Research Centre in Kenya, and Lecturer at Princeton University, and Daniel Kronauer, Associate Professor studying complex social evolution and behaviour at the Rockefeller University in New York.

Producer: Beth Eastwood Presenter: Professor Adam Hart

Photo credit: Daniel Kronauer

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, let me ask you, son.
0:03.7	Have you heard George's podcast?
0:06.1	Me and Ben Brick are back with a blast.
0:08.1	This time with stories from Africa's past, not too distant, unsolved mysteries, unsung
0:13.7	heroes from untold histories, I'm trying to make sense of the present day.
0:19.5	Join me on this journey, by pressing play.
0:23.8	Have you heard George's podcast, Chapter 4?
0:27.2	This is Discovery from the BBC World Service.
0:35.9	I'm Adam Hart and I'm back with Tooth and Claw, the series where I explore our complex
0:41.5	and challenging relationship with Earth's greatest predators, through the people who have
0:46.2	spent their lives studying, protecting, and at times narrowly escaping them.
0:53.8	And if you missed the first series, you can download the podcast for free wherever you
0:57.2	get your podcasts.
1:02.0	Now the animals we're talking about today might seem a little, well, little, compared
1:07.2	to tigers, lions and bears, but make no mistake.
1:10.8	We're still dealing with a formidable predator.
1:13.7	Army ants might be small enough to squash under your foot, but when you have hundreds
1:18.2	of thousands of them acting together, they're a force to be reckoned with.
1:22.9	I've been fascinated by them since I first saw them marching in a forest of Panama, tearing
1:27.4	apart spiders and scorpions as they went, and I've even heard a few grizzly stories of
1:32.6	African ants, eating people.
1:35.8	Join me to explore these surprising insects, our Daniel Cronauer, associate professor studying
	...

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