{"id":4467,"date":"2023-10-09T03:36:20","date_gmt":"2023-10-09T07:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/the-living-wonder-of-leafcutter-ants-in-mesmerizing-stop-motion-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2023-10-09T03:36:20","modified_gmt":"2023-10-09T07:36:20","slug":"the-living-wonder-of-leafcutter-ants-in-mesmerizing-stop-motion-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/the-living-wonder-of-leafcutter-ants-in-mesmerizing-stop-motion-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"The Living Wonder of Leafcutter Ants, in Mesmerizing Stop Motion \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Maria Popova<\/h3>\n
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Alongside humans, leafcutter ants form some of nature\u2019s vastest, most sophisticated societies \u2014 a single mature colony can contain as many ants as there are people on Earth, living with a great deal more social harmony and consonance of purpose than we do. <\/p>\n

They are also one of our planet\u2019s most dazzling testaments to evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis\u2019s insistence that \u201cwe abide in a symbiotic world\u201d<\/a>: For 50 million years, leafcutter ants have been practicing a form of agriculture in their mutualist relationship with a fungus they cultivate as a food source, growing it in fungus gardens and feeding it plant matter, which the fungus converts into nutrients the ants can feed on in turn.<\/p>\n

In fact, leafcutter ants evolved their sharp mandibles and deft prehensile legs precisely in order to cut and manipulate leaf fragments, which they then carry to their fungal garden. A single ant can carry twenty times its bodyweight \u2014 the equivalent of me carrying three grand pianos. In less than a day, a colony can clear entire trees. Emblems of emergence, they do all this as complexity theory incarnate<\/a>, not a single individual aware of the big-picture goal of the labor. <\/p>\n

In her mesmerizing film Antworks<\/em>, artist Catherine Chalmers<\/a> captures the strange beauty of this communal consciousness as a leafcutter ant colony dismantles a kaleidoscopic plant in the jungles of Costa Rica, then carries the fragments \u2014 \u201ctiny Abstract Expressionist paintings\u201d she calls them \u2014 to their secret garden. <\/p>\n