fifilura

I still remember this episode from the 80s when sir David Attenborough climbs into a termite mound up to 6 feet below the surface.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbbLCgh6sso

These termites are fungus farmers and feed the gigantic queen with it.

Unfortunately the fungus farming is not part of this clip, but it is also described the same program.

Edit: This is an older version of sir David Attenborough, revisiting another mound and talking about fungus farming. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGaT0B__2DM

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dr_dshiv

https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Ants-Story-Scientific-Explora...

EO Wilson’s book on ants is a personal favorite. This also has guides on how to catch and cultivate.

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abecedarius

Reminded of this:

> David wondered if, rather than humans going extinct and letting the mushrooms take over, humans could eat the mushrooms and survive. That question led him and Joshua Pearce to research and write Feeding Everyone No Matter What

https://allfed.info/about

odyssey7

They may yet learn to farm nutrition from plastic during a different mass extinction.

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teeray

In the case of the zombie ants, the fungus farms the ants

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ants_everywhere

Ants also farm aphids, so they may have beaten us to livestock farming too

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whoitwas

This is awesome. We could do the same. Those oyster mushroom drones got me thinking. With fungus we could build perpetual motion machines to generate infinite energy or food. Just like the ants.

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Timwi

Yet another science piece that perpetuates the misconception that “the mass extinction killed the dinosaurs”. The clade of dinosaurs is not extinct and it bothers me that science writers don't seem to learn this fact and keep getting it wrong.

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interludead

The more I learn about ants, the more it seems to me that they are the ones who will take over the world. I'm starting to fear them.

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