Window Watchers (May 21, 1954)

I window Watchers I had this up here on the bulletin board now I'm going to take bounce who will want to talk about this remember today I told you that our Obama's going to be here to tell us some more things about ants and here he is right here roar we talked about ass a little bit we talked about making houses for them and I see that you brought your aunt house over but then looking at it right now let's talk first of all about some ants and then we can kind of save the best you live okay fine um this right here the picture that we had on the bulletin board do you want to explain this as you believe this until we can do that now all right this is a rough sketch of an end house and you notice this is the ground level running across here and this of course is down in the ground we've kind of cut a surface across there and these two this is the center of the ant hill you notice the the tunnels then run down into the earth and they are much more they extend out a lot more than here in this picture it's this part this is just a small partial hotel down there I sure do this opening over here could be used for a number of things probably they use that to do some of their agricultural work in that the large cavern there on down further here we have some openings where they are probably nurseries where the right there where the worker ants have carried the young ants to the various nurseries and are feeding them different diets as they as they grow they may transfer them from one nursery to another one and give them a different diet now are they born right here nursery no the Queen lays the eggs over here on this side in the well I don't know what quite what we would call that right the Queen's House maybe we call it the Queen's room yes she lays her eggs there and then the worker ants carry those eggs from there over into some of the other rooms in the ants colony they just picked the eggs up 19 probably go right up up here here got over there over there they do they don't drop them though they handling very carefully power great I've got a fancy turns touches hands apes no ants eggs are they covered like a hen with a hard shell our Channel no no they're not they're very soft and they hatch rather soon into the young ants which are very small of course and they're quite and if any one of our audience here has seen these ants tunnels they've noticed the little white things that many of the ants pick up and run with when they open in an ant colony all those are young ants they're not eggs oh there will be baby ants that's right and then they change over into a sort of a pupa case where they change from the larvae and to the adult oh they're just like the young moths and butterflies that we talked about the image right the larva is a little worm life well they're not exactly one like they're more likely what they make me think of is a Papoose you know an Indian Papoose in a cradle sort of affair well that's what these young ants look like they're very they're helpless and completely helpless oh and that's the reason the workers have to carry them from one place to another and feed them and that sort of thing without workers we talks on last patong gutterson about worker termites and all their worker ants to termites how social insects are answer social insects today they fit right into the social insect picture just like the bees and the wasps and some of those things well what else do we have besides workers well we have some drawings here of some of these different castes we call them in the ant world the first one of course is the Queen you remember that the termites they had a wind sexual form the males and females got wings and flew out and sailed around well so did the ants have wings and then after the two have made it then the Queen's go back to their colonies and they break off their wings they don't need the wings anymore in fact they'd be in the way in that tunnel that they live in oh and this is a picture of a queen after she has gone back to her colony you notice how large her abdomen is over here let's see right there see it's very large and it's because she is producing so many eggs all the time she that's all she does after she goes back to her colony is produce eggs and then she doesn't have any wings like this one here doesn't happen this she will never would never have any wings again after she's once had wings the worker ants feed her and take care of the eggs after she lays them and so forth she's entirely helpless and will that's that's her main function well what other kinds out of them besides two well we've mentioned the worker maybe we should did show the workers ant to them you notice here that the the worker ant is much smaller than the Queen and she does not have the abdomen the full size the large size as the Queen does this part here right much smaller mm-hmm and on the other hand she looks this worker looks very much like the Queen does except for that large sized abdomen that the Queen has the worker ants are all female ants the male's of the colony after their mating flight the male's die off or are just around there until they naturally dude the ant colony except during the time when there are winged forms the ant colony is composed entirely of female ants now the the other cast that we have to think about mainly as the soldier and soldier we have to these ant colonies have to have protection just like countries seem to have to have nowadays termite tech soldier it's too that's the not soldier ants oh you'll find your turtle do termites that's wrong what's the yeah the well the main difference between these that this isn't exactly what we'd call it good drawing but it serves the purpose I believe it you see the the large head there with the very heavy mouth parts mm-hmm yes those are we call the mandibles or teeth teeth mm-hmm they of course are what the soldiers use to protect the colony they use those big mouth parts to crush other insects once in a while they are useful to some ants will eat seeds and the soldiers will crush the seeds for the rest of the colony but it's usually they use them to protect themselves well now what did do ants have to protect themselves against well mainly other ants that is the ants main enemy here in Iowa particularly the ants main enemy is other or are other ants the some of the other types of amp well now let me see how many ants i can think of having seen sometimes along on the sidewalks for cities great big well they're not great big they're about that big these big black hands walking back and forth and carrying things so there are big black hands ok the little black pants 20 their varying sizes yes sometimes i see these little there were these bigger black ants running up and down trees what are they doing on the tree well some of the ants some of those big black ants the very big ones sometimes getting almost an inch long our carpenter ants and they build their homes in would rather than in soil like we showed here in our picture and they live in wood and those big black ones they chew out the inside of the wood sometimes of dead trees sometimes they get into houses do they eat this wood no termites they don't eat the wood they just hollow out the area to live in it take a bite and they dump it off they dumped it outside that's right uh-huh they just use it to make the house phone well now I've been wondering you mentioned that the male ants died sometimes down inside their little hotel or underground where I'm living um what happens to them do they have a burial yard seeing you there social insects fair one know most of them are carried from the colony and dumped out on the surface of the ground just get them out of the way it's about what they do they don't have any real burial ceremony and they in some colonies they do eat them but those are purely the cannibalistic ants the most ants carry them out and leave them on the surface of the soil well now I know sometimes in the summer if I leave some bread out you know if we did put it away overnight I forget to wipe off the platter and leave a few crumbs and I'll get up in the morning and find all these little tiny red ants running around yeah Barry do they carry these little crumbs they'll carry a little crumbs or they'll carry syrup or honey or sugar back to their nest that brings up an interesting point to Sonny there the ants are developed in different ways different types of ants some of the ants are what we call hunting ants and these hunting ants are well they're rather prehistoric their primitive these hunting ants go out they send out one or many ants together and they'll go out and find other insects to eat and they'll to catch them and drag those insects back to the colony and eat them then another type of of ant that we have are what we call the herdsmen ants you know these herdsmen ants they have captured plant lice and agents or aphids and these athens see-cret a sticky syrupy like material it's very sweet and these ants have learned to liken very much and so they've captured some of these plant lice and taking them back to their homes and maybe in one of those caverns like we showed in our drawing they have kept some of these herdsmen hands so there are some of these plant lice so that they can melt them for their honey do it apparently satisfies that sweet sweet craving that they have oh I see in other words then they go out and they take care of these little plant lice and they sometimes taken back into their hotel room and raise them bring them up just like they were called a very special just like kosher oh I see that's right and another group of another type of ant is the what we call an agricultural lands because they they have learned to like a particular type of moss or fungus and they have taken plantings of this moss or fungus back to their colony and in some of these underground caverns this moss or fungus will be planted on rotting leaves or pieces of wood and then they'll have their own crops right there in their colony they eat that moss or fungus so some of them are really ate farmers to there that's exactly what they are oh boy they're smart little fellow very much so I see you have a picture here are all of them ant and termite let's look at this pitch again because I can remember one of the differences between an ant and termite and I remember that this difference of one of the differences is that an ant has what you call one that a lost watch my waistline very narrowly very narrow in here and the termite is just straight up and down that's right but I was quite interested to our with the difference with the wings the termites have wings that are much the same size 22 pairs of almost the same size wings while the ant has two pairs of wings one very large and one small maybe we should unveil our house here so let's do I told the window watches that you might be bringing over your aunt notice we have it covered with paper so that the ants will work a little bit along the edge of the glass so we can see them oh that aunt house is just like the one that we yes just like the one you built I'm gonna show you a funny about yesterday this is where you drop them in right well we put them in we took this top board off to put the dirt and ants in there the maybe you can see here on the glass can you point out those that little opening in the soil they're full of young and right there uh-huh there are probably several hundred young ants right there in that little cavern I suppose you'd call it and if these of course are part way grown young ones and they will be fed daily until they get full grown and then they'll change over into the adult ants you know as I look at this Earl I can see some little roads that they build in from one of these cavern like places to another I see a lot of running here from the nursery that's right and this is just many of the things that we can watch what's going on inside this little ant colony and I want to thank you very much for coming over I've learned a lot about ants I didn't know they were not so merry bring any activities going on so thank you Iran for coming over and we'll see you again okay goodbye now you