My cousin has an ant farm. The book should be interesting for him.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Journey-Ants-Story-Scientific-Exploration&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0674485262" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Journey-Ants-Story-Scientific-Explora...</a>EO Wilson’s book on ants is a personal favorite. This also has guides on how to catch and cultivate.

I think it has already started¹.1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;neurosciencenews.com&#x2F;microplastics-brain-health-27794&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;neurosciencenews.com&#x2F;microplastics-brain-health-2779...</a>

Evolution, like geology, tends to happen in fits and starts - yes, it happens over very long timescales as a general phenomenon, but significant changes tend to happen in very short timescales, before then annealing over a population and finding equilibrium over a longer timescale.Take lactose tolerance in humans, for instance. That happened almost spontaneously in Northern European populations 6kYa, as it was such an advantageous trait for herdsmen, but then spread slowly - to the extent that it is still not a ubiquitous trait of sapiens. Many such examples, human and otherwise.I expect there are already plastic fixing bacteria out there, but they have not yet proliferated or optimised the trait. Should other food sources dwindle for whatever reason, this trait will become ubiquitous, rapidly, as competing populations die off.

Such changes could be millions of years in the making

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

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.

The more I learn about ants, the more it seems to me that they are the ones who will take over the world. I&#x27;m starting to fear them.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=xy86ak2fQJM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=xy86ak2fQJM</a>This one?

The Queen of Trees is an excellent documentary

I learned this fact from watching the documentary &quot;The Queen of trees&quot;, quite fascinating! It blew my mind when I first saw it. The documentary is free on YouTube!

Seeing ants crawling up and down a tree is how I discovered that the tree was infested with aphids.

They also spelt barley. I’ve watched the sugar ants here with fascination as late every summer they gather vast quantities of barley corns, and then drag them below ground. A few weeks later they eject heaps of husks around the entrances to their nests, and on the one occasion I accidentally dug into one of their nests, it stank like a malthouse.I can only assume that their purpose is to convert the carbohydrates in the grain into sugars by encouraging the germination process, which they then live off through the winter.I can’t actually seem to find any documentation of the behaviour, but after seeing them do it for the five years we’ve lived here, I’m under the impression it’s no fluke.

ants save them through the winter and then spread them

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

&#x27;The extinction of non-Avian Dinosaurs&#x27; just doesn&#x27;t roll off the tongue.

Birds are part of the dinosaur clade and alive and well!
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Avialae" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Avialae</a>

Yet another comment saying someone is wrong with no context or links for the rest of us. :(

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&#x27;t seem to learn this fact and keep getting it wrong.

Ants learned to farm fungi during a mass extinction