Original air date: 28 November 1990
Selected sequences
Underground filming – naked mole rats (29’40-35’20)
Hierarchical society, similar to those super societies known among insects (ants, bees and termites). This is, presumably, the only one known among vertebrates (unless humans are included). The society includes a queen (responsible for producing more team members), workers (for digging and consequently searching for food) and soldiers (fighting off danger like the snake intruding at 33′). A probe was probably used for this filming rather than a glass pane as in previous series, new technology.
Ants society, leaf-cutting ants
Leaf cutter ants working on demolishing the leaves from a tree in the neighbourhood. All the workers are sisters working seamlessly at a common task. Top left image shows a leaf in tatters after being attacked by the ants. The image on the right is a close-up of two sisters cutting off a single piece of an accurately measured size to be carried away to their underground nest (below images).
The garden of the ants
Inside the nest workers give the leaves to other workers (top left) that meticulously clean them of any outside fungal spores by licking (top right). Workers can reap some reward for their work by chewing (arrow points out the jaw chewing the green edge of the leaf, bottom left) some sap from the leaves is digestible. The image bottom left shows the chambered nest.
The breakdown of the leaves
Top left shows a piece of leaf after having been given to the fungus some 24 hours ago, the leaf has a lot of its pigment. Top right is further 24 hours later when the fungus has fully digested the leaf. The harvest is carried in the mouth (bottom left, encircled) and fed to the members of the colony. The fungus is spent and is removed to the refuse dump outside the nest (bottom right).
Final words (About the ants societies) : “… It’s not the monkeys or the rodents or, indeed, the human beings who dominate the forest. It’s the tiny ant that, by multiplying itself, has turned itself into a super-organism, a complex, highly disciplined society.”