For billions of years countless species have been sending information back and forth. Fast networks of messages.
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| Evolution of Animal |
Designed to defend against predators. Why your mate and obtain food. There is a staggering diversity of ways in which animals can communicate. From microscopic bacteria. To the largest animals on earth. The ability to relay information is often determined to species very survival. This is the story of communication.
Survival of the fittest. That basic tenet of evolution implies that in the animal kingdom it every creature for itself. To ensure their own survival animals rely on a vast array of communication methods. Visual. Chemical. Vocal. And gestured how effectively animals communicate can mean. Life and death. These researchers are investigating the lines of communication between pray in their predators. In this experiment a snake is given a choice between 2 frogs.
Which will it be. The message of the poison dart frog is loud and clear. My bright colorful skin is toxic. I am a deadly meal. The other frog is and communicating anything. For most animals finding food reproducing and living in social groups is totally dependent on the ability to share information. To communicate. And our world today is entirely dependent on organized flow of information. But humans aren't the only species whose lofty status in the natural world. Is owed to its powers of communication.
Communication was also the evolutionary engine for creatures that first appeared 150000000 years ago. A type of insect that would ultimately become one of the most numerous organisms on the face of the earth. And. There are a lot of ants in the world if you took all the land and put them on a scale together and waited. 20 percent of what you just wait would be the big pilot and sitting on. But what can explain how such small defenseless creatures became such evolutionary giants.
Deborah Gordon and her colleague Mike green have spent years investigating the collective power of ants what continues to fascinate me about ads is how such limited apparently inept individuals in the aggregate can do such amazing things.
Few creatures work is tirelessly or cooperatively is a chance. Their intricate ness or like many cities measuring meters in width and depth engineering feats appear to be the results of rigid organization but how do they stay organized and how did they communicate. At first glance an ant colony resembles a human construction site where workers carry out specific tasks. The entire world features the same specialization there are patrollers to search for food.
Then foragers who harvest food points it's found. And the cleanup crew to sweep the nest for dead ends. But where is a human construction site has a foreman issuing verbal written or gesture orders. Lance had no chain of,nd. In fact it's display no visible sign of being able to communicate at all. How do ants know what to do. That colony operates without any central control no management no hierarchy nobody deciding what needs to be done.
The source of communication turns out to be simple chemicals that cover the body of the end. The hydrocarbons. A hydrocarbon is just a type of molecule that's made up of carbon send hydrogens. They're commonly found on the surface of not only answer all kinds of insects especially social insects. Hydrocarbons amid an odor in many social insects use them to communicate a very basic piece of information. Are you one of us. Or one of them.
Most ads can't see their main form of perceiving the world around them smell and they smell with their antennae when an ant touches another and with its antennae it can tell if the other answer nest made we can actually test that now spent recognition response using a glass block. When a glass block covered with hydrocarbons from a rival colonies introduced to the nasty and a media attack. Those ants are biting block right now. Could also use hydrocarbons to communicate more complex information signals that might tell them what jobs to do. When green isolated the hydrocarbons from the surface of different hands he discovered that each job had a different scent.
This discovery lead them to design an experiment to see if it was possible to communicate with a chance. Could you compelling and to do a job simply by using hydrocarbons alone. Gordon and green created many cans by coating glass beads with the hydrocarbon to patrol our hands. The ants whose job it is to scout for food. What these hydrocarbons communicate a message. Each morning the patrollers come out and search the foraging area and the 4 just won't come out until the patrollers come back the patrollers need to come back at a certain rate to stimulate the forgers to go out and by using these beads we can mimic the rate at which patrollers come back. When Peter dropped into the nest. The hydrocarbon sent communicates that the beads are returning patroller rants. In that it's time for these unemployed and to take up a new job.
Go get the food to patrollers had found. It's not as though one and gives another aunt a message it's that each and can use its recent experience of interactions to decide what to do so the message is in the pattern of in our actions not in any particular signal. With this simple experiment the researchers found that the mode of communication responsible for and ability to work together with such a standing precision is little more than a simple set of chemicals relaying information.
What's remarkable. Iraqi with each other in a really pretty simple way but because the chance can assess the rate at which they interact with other workers global changes can happen within their society despite the fact there's no boss assessing all of this and telling each worker what to do this mode of communication has helped ants thrive for 150000000 years. And that Connie would be unable to survive if individuals didn't communicate with each other for ads the on going very simple repeated patterns of interaction are what sustains the whole life of the colony. Interviews communication to become some of the most successful creatures on earth but how did the process of communication for start. Which species first relayed information to each other.
Does a huge mysterious glow in the ocean scene for hundreds of years hold the answer. Over the eons. Chemical visual and vocal forms of communication. Old old. And over helping animals to flourish in virtually every environment on the planet. How did this astonishing process of relaying information begin. A strange occurrence in the ocean may shed light on the very first communication. Not long ago orbiting satellites picked up a strange glow in the sea off the horn of Africa. Tens of thousands of square miles of ocean an area the size of Connecticut. Was lit up. It was a phenomenon known as milky sees. Similar occurrences had been witnessed for centuries but with no explanation. If you read 20000 leagues under the sea air other sort of sea going novels they'll be some very accurate descriptions of milky sees that the characters in the book have experienced. The source of the milky sea was revealed to be bioluminescent bacteria.
A species of tiny microbes founded see. Why were trillions of marine bacteria lighting up all at once. Molecular biologists investigated the phenomenon and made an amazing discovery. Bacteria talk to each other. Did you communicate. They obviously don't have words like we do what they use for their words chemicals said they exchange chemicals as their language and it allows them to do different things.
Molecular biologist bunny Bassler studies help individual bacterium release chemical molecules to signal their presence to other bacteria as they're growing in dividing their making and releasing small molecules that you can just think of like poor moans or fair moans. And when the molecules hit a particular amount all the bacteria would recognize as molecules were there tell about how many neighbors they would happen and then they would all turn on the light in synchrony. Bioluminescent microbes are but one of millions of different bacterial strains to communicate this way. How do they do it.
Back to you often act like the legislative body. To achieve anything important they need to work as a group. And to do this they first need a quorum. The presence of a critical number of individuals that amid molecules to each other. Some call this phenomenon form sensing the bacteria votes with these little chemical votes they count the votes and then the entire group acts together but what would a single cell bacteria and organism that reproduces all by itself need to communicate they need communication because they need to be able to carry out the tasks that are too hard for the individual they needed exactly the same way we often need to get groups together to accomplish things that we just couldn't do it by ourselves because they're too hard some bacteria communicate to find each other so they can hunt together. Others communicate to launch collective attacks on our bodies.
And these bacteria off the coast of Africa turned bioluminescent. In the ocean one bacteria makes a little bit a light I can be perceived threat they all blow to get there you get perceivable light. So what are bioluminescent bacteria trying to communicate. Incredibly well many creatures use communication to avoid their predators these bacteria are lighting up to attract fish to eat them in the case of bacteria they actually live inside the guts of their animals so for them to be eaten by a fish is actually a favorable thing they want to be in that intestinal environment when they get together in these colonies they produce a glow and some fish will be attracted to that light come along and he did. The product of the earth's most primitive organisms milky sees are believed to be a remnant of the planet very first communication.
But for Bassler talking bacteria are about far more than bioluminescence. The way they communicate reveals how cells the building blocks of complex life first came together. Because they have chemical communication we think that they invented the way that groups of organisms ourselves work together to do things cooperatively such cooperation among cells is what creates and maintains the organs that run our complex bodies and the mechanisms bacteria used to do this chemical communication are very analogous to the strategies used by the different cells in your body to make groups to carry out particular tasks like your kidney cells in your heart cells your muscle cells.
In the billions of years since bacteria first related information life forms have become more complex. In the process of chemical communication has been refined and manipulated by a variety of different species all with the same purpose survival. These California ground squirrels use chemical sense that they secrete to mark their territory. But by doing so squirrels unwittingly communicate their whereabouts to their chief predator. The rattle snake. Battle 6 have an amazing sense of smell that they used to hunt their prey.
As ground squirrels are moving through their environment or in their burrows their inadvertently communicating with the rattlesnake leaving behind a factory cues which the rattlesnake news to locate them. Biologist Barbara clean kiss his long study the relationship between these 2 rivals. She knew that her rattle snakes the scent trail left behind by squirrels was like having GPS directions right to their burrows. So how could squirrels possibly survive and thrive when their main predator had turned their own communication system against them. Lucas wondered whether the answer lay with the curious behavior she had witnessed in the wild squirrels chewing on shed rattle snake skins. Yeah size Hastert chewing on it. It's kind of a sticky paste if you get it wet shed skin. And all sort of flip their flank Abed. And then only after their tail. Lucas this observation was a revelation. World for trying to cloak themselves in the center of their enemy a form of deceptive communication. But where the snakes falling for the track.
We had an idea that the stakes in applications serve an anti predator function but we wanted to directly ask the predator and see if it was affected by adding rattle snake. Using snake skins and squirrel for she collected in the field Lucas prepared to samples one marked strictly with squirrel sent and another with a combination of both snake and squirrel sense mimicking the result of the squirrels cloaking tactic. While they're not completely covering all their odor so it's gonna be a mixture of grounds for owner and rattle snake on. Lucas was then ready for her subject one of the deadliest snakes in the world. The northern Pacific rattlesnake.
Snakes pick up cents differently than mammals they smell with their tongues using it for shape to direct air molecules toward a sensory organ on the roof of their mouths. For clues kiss the frequency and speed with which the snake flicked his tongue would let her know if it had locked on to the squirrel sent. What I would score is the amount of time the snake would have his head over the filter paper and then also the number of tongue flicks that day did over the filter.
The squirrel only sent clearly got the snakes attention. Sales total exchanges. Master. Yeah he's definitely interested. But the sample cloaked in rattle snakes and tempered its aggression. A series of slower longer tongue flicks. For a clue guess this meant only one thing the snake said was masking the squirrel sent. Ray had deceived predator using chemical communication the snake was led to think it was pursuing not a squirrel but another snake by testing the stakes directly I could see that their hunting behavior was in fact affected by adding rattlesnake ordered a grounds floater and therefore reduces the predation risk for the ground squirrels. Billions of years after it was invented ground squirrels have advanced chemical communication. Using it out with their predators and ensure their own survival.
Communication is the basis of predator prey interactions and ground squirrels by applying stakes into the body are manipulating this communication and gaining a major advantage over rattle snakes. Center in chemical communication provides insects mammals and other animals with a fast effective means of sending a message but for some animals in the ocean a different strategy for communicating turned out to be the most effective. And for sending instructions are invading predators. Chemical communication can be key.
But such subtle messages can get lost in the shifting currents of the big blue say. For long range communication some animals evolved a more powerful way of getting their message across. Sound. Each year in Cape coral Florida residents encounter an unexplained phenomenon. A deep series of sounds rattle the walls of their canalside homes it would be like the moon. And all through the house.
For years the source remained a mystery. Until word reach David Mann and oceanographer at the university of South Florida. We heard through the grapevine that people were hearing a strange sounds at night in their houses. One of my grad students Jim the Paseo actually went down to the city council meetings that I know what it is I can tell you what it is. One night look Castille took his research bow down to Cape coral to confirm his hunch. He brought with him one instrument. A waterproof microphone.
The perfect tool to pinpoint the surprising source. Come out on the water and it's peaceful night it's quiet. You don't hear anything except the gentle rocking of the waves but if we put a hydrophone into the surface of the water and we use a simple hand held speaker we experience an entirely different landscape. The culprit the Casio discovered was a fish. One with an apt name. The black drum. Because you had long known male drum fish to be some of the loudest creatures in the sea. He also knew they didn't make that noise for the sake of it. They were communicating with one another. These are all. Advertising themselves.
The females that will ultimately choose who they mate with. For a mail drop being loud increases their chance of passing on their genes. The males are making a sound. Boom truck track females and they like to do that between 7:00 AM to AM just when people are trying to go to bed so the sounds are so allowed to travel right through the sea wall up into the house it's amazing you can go out to the driveway of these houses but your head down and hear the sound of the fish coming from 100 yards away. But why is sounds such a powerful channel of communication in the ocean.
Here light is in short supply. Chemicals quickly dissipate. But for sound. Water axis the ultimate conductor. Sonic signals passed between the dense molecules of water like an electric current. Traveling farther in 5 times faster than on land. Sound for animals that live under water travels great distances and weakens very little over those distances and so it's no surprise to learn that many marine animals relying on sound as a communication channel. Scientists have long known fish to make all manner of noise from clicks. To church. To cross.
It's likely that they're common ancestors the first fish we've all 500000000 years ago couldn't produce such sounds. But then fish evolved organs that would allow some of them to be master communicators. As fishy ball. They involved a swim bladder which is an air bladder that's inside their stomach that they use to maintain buoyancy. Station nationally use this adaptation solely for hovering in the water column but over time it evolved into the instrument that would give drum fish their name.
They have all the special muscles that twitched extremely rapidly they're the fastest known twitching muscles and invertebrate world and they basically contract their muscle together and beat in the past when Blatter like a drum. This adaptation would help the mailed from fish attract mates. But while the volume of many fish calls is considerable. They can't rival those of another order of marine life emerged 50000000 years ago. The most powerful communicators in the sea. Wales. Not only are whales the largest animals. They're also. The loudest. Their ghostly songs resonate throughout the oceans. And can exceed the decibel level of a supersonic jet engine. How and why wheels develop such an ear splitting method of communication. What do whales communicate to each other. And how is it played a role in these enormous animal survival. It's the beginning of the 20 first century and we've only really just been listen to the ocean on a proper scale for less than a decade so we're in the early stages of discovering what is actually going on with the communication system of Wales wide ranging in few in number.
We'll see been elusive research subjects. Chris Clark a bio acoustics expert a core now wondered if you might be able to decipher the messages and we'll communication from here on is already connected but in order to do that he had to figure out a way to track the. Collaborating with other marine research groups he devised a way to eavesdrop on we'll conversations.
We've designed and developed these auto detection boys so we can get information back rapidly over the satellite system we also distribute the network of bottom units these pop ups that collect data continuously the pop ups are positioned to capture every we'll call within a 300 mile radius off the New England coast. Once the pop ups are retrieved the recordings are sent to Clark's lap at Cornell. He and his team are then able to use whales calls to precisely mapped their movements. 3 acoustically locate the animal using the known positions and the speed of sound and measuring the time differences we can actually position the animal in the bay. For years scientists believe wheels were loners rarely interacting with other members of their species.
But the acoustic maps pointing Clark towards a surprising discovery. So here to Wales that are counter calling back and forth and they're gonna join up. I joined up. Move. And then split up. One goes to the east one goes down here joins up with another way all this one goes up here joins with another well so this is constant chatter back and forth of everybody's checking in and calling and then joining up Clark's data reveals that these whales are actually social animals to travel and loose knit groups to share food and find available mates. But unlike other social creatures that live in traveling close proximity whales traverse huge swaths of open water.
If you look at these animals from a satellite and you watch them over time you see them moving. As a cohesive. Body of individuals. It's an acoustic hurt. And I heard it spread over 100000 square miles. To communicate over these large distances whales develop powerful low frequency call. With the right conditions the bass notes of somewhere else controversy tire ocean. I can hear a whale singing off of the coast of Canada. When I'm in order we. The voice is so low and radiates through the ocean so efficiently travels almost as though it's a a laser etches travels very very efficiently and ocean. For millions of years these giant animals have used this channel of communication to ensure their survival. But as it turns out.
Another group of Titans is now operating on the same frequency. Ships. Most the time just hear this fog this noise it's indescribable which is sort of the day and it's been increasing doubling in size every 10 years. Human hunting is driven many will species to the brink. Extinction. Clark now wonders. Whether human noise will eventually push them. The H.. If I only have a chance to communicate with you. One out of 10 times. How do I tell you where the food. How do I tell you whether or not high quality may I involved to communicate over this scale and now I'm forced. Not because of anything else other than noise. To live in that world. Continued destruction of. Communication appears inevitable. Only time will tell whether the world's largest animals can evolve to overcome this challenge. Wales would use sound to conquer the ocean but on land animals would need special equipment to ensure their survival. They are one of the most successful in fear predators on the face of the earth. This. For millions of years the world has lived in packs subscribing to the old adage strength in numbers to ensure their survival.
What was it individual wills controlling large stretches of land in search of food. Pack relies on one thing to keep it together. Vocal communication. Wolf howls can travel up to 6 miles and help inform other pack members where everyone is. A pack of wolves is a team working to hunt. Also how in order to find each other so if an individual has left the pack for sometime is trying to find the rest of them that individual how. I will get a response and that we can find a pack. We'll see the news howling as a form of defense to appear more powerful than they are. As a group as as packs around the down side have group calls to communicate to neighboring packs Hey we're here listen to helping we are. Wolf howls and every mammal cry have a 350000000 year history that began when teaching creatures called tetrapods first moved from water to land it turns out that sound travels a lot better in water then on land and so when animals moved on the land they have to develop a whole new audio. And new ways of producing sound. Life on land demanded. Audio equipment. An amplifier. What evolved in many animals was a voice box or larynx. In Oregon with membranes and vibrate making noise when air is pushed through them.
Voicebox is allowed land dwellers to communicate by projecting sound waves through the air. A voice box with developing almost all land animals. Including humans. Wolf would use this new communication equipment to help make them stronger predators but it would be one species desire to reproduce that would drive it to develop a voice box more advanced than any other on the planet. Birds. Each spring and woods everywhere male song birds begin singing in an attempt to woo females. To succeed they need a method of communication that can penetrate dense forest. One of the benefits of using sound over using visual signals especially in an area like this where visual signals quickly get blocked by trees their leaves or other things is a sound can permeate throughout an area under very 3 dimensional kind of way. The key to bird communication lines and it's incredibly sophisticated voice box.
Unlike the single. Hearings and wolves and humans songbirds has to. Just above their long. This innovation call the syrinx allows brands and other birds to modulate different notes at the same time. This helps the music vocal communication to penetrate the dense forest and find mates. Different frequencies with the left side on the right side simultaneously. Which is something that humans just can't do. Bird song has evolved to convey one main message comes mate with me. Far more sophisticated communication systems have evolved in chips. Wales. And dolphins. But new research suggests that there is one animal that may have surpassed every other mammal except us language skills. It's a tiny nearly defenseless wrote. The common prairie dog. The language like properties of dogs are probably the most sophisticated animal language that has been described today. Consul Abacha cough of northern Arizona university has been decoding prairie dog cherubs for 20 years.
They can describe the coat color but I already they can describe the size and shape of the coyote they can describe the speed of travel of the coyote. This tonal language system kind of like Chinese and some of the native American languages where changing the tones changes the meaning can the simple looking creatures really be using highly sophisticated communication. There are hints that prairie dogs are surprisingly intelligent. They live in massive communities with underground tunnels that can stretch for miles and. Very dog towns are kind of like medieval cities where there are marauders coming in robbers coming in and like in the medieval city there are Sentinel animals that are watching for predators. Prairie dogs have many predators to fear and they respond to each in different ways. Here's a call for a hawk. Usually it's a single term. When the alarm goes up for a hawk the prairie dog stands bolt upright.
This is the call for coyote. The call for a distant coyote sends them scurrying to the edge of their Berle's. And a nearby coyote alarm sends them underground. The calls are crucial to survival get the call wrong in the prairie dogs get eaten. The call sounds similar but as with Chinese and other tone languages tiny differences and tone conveyed big changes in meaning. With some practice we can hear the difference after maybe about 2 or 3 days. So we hear an alarm call and everybody looks around says where's the coyote.
Over the years Slabodka cough and his team compiled a dictionary of prairie dog by simulating different predator attacks and recording the calls. In the lab the sound waves of individual box are converted into visual graphics. The call itself is a very complex acoustic wave forms and this is simply a pictorial representation. When these graphics are analyzed by specialized software. The team watched a few because they recognize explode into an entire prairie dog vocabulary. Some of the calls I call adjective like called Tricia wears a blue jumpsuit and she goes walking in the prairie dog colony in the prairie dogs call in response to her wearing the blue jumpsuit. And then she changed into a white jumpsuit and the prairie dogs call to her in response to the white jumpsuit. The patterns on the screen look the same to the train die the subtle variations make all the difference.
All for the blue jumpsuit it is saying typical human call but there is a trailing edge which denotes the color blue and here is a white jumpsuit again the typical human call but it's got a buzz on the upper and the lower part so this part codes for white care and this part codes for blue care. Consular Bijan cough is now working to see if prairie dogs are born with their language like ability. Or if they are taught their calls like humans learning words. If they are it will be hard to deny the prairie dog is a true animal language. So all along.
Animals have been talking behind our backs. Could it be that the origin. Of human language or shared with our closest relatives. Ancestors managed to invent the most sophisticated form of communication on. Language in many ways defines what is to be human. Language has evolved exceptionally rapidly within humans and so human language is probably the key innovation that is allowed humans to spread so rapidly across the globe into dominate the planet ecologically. Just where did human language come from how did we make the leap from the seemingly simple noises made by other animals too precise words that form the most complex method of communication on the planet.
From fossils paleontologists know that our ancestors branched off from apes about 5000000 years ago. But precisely when our ancestors first of all the capacity for language remains one of evolution's greatest mysteries. I think it's important to remember that like lots of other things in the natural world human language evolved it didn't just arise. It was selected for over evolutionary time and the parts of our brain that are involved in language were also selected for.
Searching for the elusive roots of human language led neuroscientist Jared Taylor tell us to take a radical approach he wondered at the brains of our closest living relatives might reveal a clue as to how our language evolves. From the genetic evidence we know the chimpanzees and humans share a common ancestor some 5000000 years ago. What we don't know is really what chimpanzees and humans have in common when it comes to communication. Having worked with chimps for years tightly on the tele knew they communicated in a humanlike manner.
Japan's used you sound what we call the localization. They also use gestures. They can make with their hands by actually extending handout or even touching another individual. I make different faces to express either something they want to accomplish or in response to another individual has done. So in some ways to message me cation is really similar to human language because it involves the use of all these different things facial expressions body postures sounds. Take me on the tele also observed that when champs wanted food they seem to use specific symbols a seemingly crude form of sign language. He knew that in the human brain a region called broke his area becomes activated when humans not only speak but use sign language as well. We're chimps employing the same part of their brain to communicate. And if so.
Could give us clues on the evolutionary steps to develop language. Could the origins of our greatest evolutionary achievement be found inside the brains of champs. Using a brain imaging device developed for humans called a pet scanner Ted Leila tele embarked on an unprecedented study. He wanted to capture 3 D. images of the brains of chips is the animals gestured and called for food to see if they might have their own version of brokers area. So this is a very exciting for us because it was really the first time that anyone had looked at what was going on in the chimpanzee brain during their communication comparing images of human brains to chimp breaks when communicating tech Leila tele found remarkable similarities. The chimps were using a part of the brain that appeared to be in the same position as brokers area. It's been thought that these areas that are involved in speech production in language production. A rose Justin humans and probably weren't present before we split with chimpanzees.
What this tells us is that maybe these parts were already used for communication even before we had human language and so this really changes how we think language may have involved or how language may have come to be. Language may have its roots in a relative that our earliest ancestors split from 5000000 years ago. But if humans and chimps share the same language center in their brains why we're humans the only species to ultimately develop language. But we still don't really know. Is why did he humans set off on this unprecedented trajectory.
Why did natural selection just keep selecting on bigger and bigger brains 3 times as large as a chimpanzee.
Along the course of evolutionary time complexity in our communication was selected for as was increased complexity in our brain. But the real answer as to why this may have happened we're really not sure. What could have been the pressures that lead our ancestors to involve language. Was it an adaptation. And for living in large numbers. I need to band together in a hostile world. For now scientists can only speculate. For the week. This may just be on the cusp of understanding of why we stand alone in our capacity to express complex ideas. To write down our thoughts. Or to reason with each other. This much is clear. Communication even in its most basic of forms provides all creatures great and small with a powerful strategy. For survival. In many social insects use them to communicate a very basic piece of information. Are you one of us. Or one of them.
Most aunts can't see their main form of perceiving the world around them smell and they smell what their antennae when an ad touches another and with its antennae it can tell if the other answer nest made we can actually test that now spent recognition response using a glass block. When a glass block covered with hydrocarbons from a rival colonies introduced to the nasty and a media Lee attack. Those ants are biting block right now. Could also use hydrocarbons to communicate more complex information signals that might tell them what jobs to do.
When green isolated the hydrocarbons from the surface of different bands he discovered that each job had a different scent. This discovery lead them to design an experiment to see if it was possible to communicate with a chance. Could you compelling and to do a job simply by using hydrocarbons alone. Gordon and green created many cans by coating glass beads with the hydrocarbon to patrol our hands. The. At first glance an ant colony resembles a human construction site where workers carry out specific tasks. The entire world features the same specialization there are patrollers to search for food.
Then foragers who harvest food points it's found. And the cleanup crew to sweep the nest for dead ends. But where is a human construction site has a foreman issuing verbal written or gesture orders ants have no chain of,nd. In fact it's display no visible sign of being able to communicate at all. How do ants know what to do. That colony operates without any central control no management no hierarchy nobody deciding what needs to be done.
The source of communication turns out to be simple chemicals that cover the body of the end. Hydrocarbons. A hydrocarbon is just a type of molecule that's made up of carbon send hydrogens. They're commonly found on the surface of not only answer all kinds of insects especially social insects. Hydrocarbons amid an old insure their own survival animals rely on a vast array of communication methods. Visual. Chemical. Vocal. And gestures how effectively animals communicate can mean the. Life and death. These researchers are investigating the lines of communication between pray and their predators. In this experiment a snake is given a choice between 2 frogs. Which will it be. The message of the poison dart frog is loud and clear. My bright colorful skin is toxic. I am a deadly meal. The other frog is and communicating anything. For most animals finding food reproducing and living in social groups is totally dependent on the ability to share information. To communicate.
And our world today is entirely dependent on organized flow of information. But humans aren't the only species whose lofty status in the natural. For billions of years countless species have been sending information back and forth. Fast networks of messages. Designed to defend against predators. Why your mate and obtain food. There is a staggering diversity of ways in which animals can communicate. From microscopic bacteria. To the largest animals on earth. The ability to relay information is often determined to species very survival. This is the story of communication. Survival of the fittest. That basic tenet of evolution implies that in the animal kingdom it every creature for itself.
Total world. Is owed to its powers of communication. Communication was also the evolutionary engine for creatures that first appeared 150000000 years ago. A type of insect that would ultimately become one of the most numerous organisms on the face of the earth. And. There are a lot of ants in the world if you took all the land and put them on a scale together and waited. 20 percent of what you just wait would be the big pilot's sitting on. But what can explain how such small defenseless creatures became such evolutionary giants.
Deborah Gordon and her colleague Mike green have spent years investigating the collective power of hands what continues to fascinate me about ounce is how such limited apparently inept individuals in the aggregate can do such amazing things. Few creatures work is tirelessly or cooperatively is a chance.
Their intricate net so like many cities measuring meters in width and depth engineering feats appear to be the results of rigid organization but how do they stay organized and how did they communicate.
