The Reign of the Hell Ants
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- Опубликовано: 10 май 2024
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This ancient species had the same six legs and segmented body that we’d recognize from an ant today. But it also had a huge, scythe-like jaw and a horn coming out of its head. This bizarre predator belonged to a group known as “hell ants.” But they’re gone now, and we’re still trying to figure out why.
Please see the pinned comment for a disclaimer on the ethical issues surrounding Burmese amber in paleontology.
The thumbnail is an illustration of Haidomyrmex by Franz Anthony. Thanks to Franz (franzanth.com) and Ceri Thomas (nixillustration.com/) for their Hell Ant illustrations featured in this episode!
And special thanks to Phillip Barden and David Grimaldi for providing images from their paper on Cretaceous ants:
Barden, Phillip and David Grimaldi. “Adaptive Radiation in Socially Advanced Stem-Group Ants from the Cretaceous” Current Biology, February 22, 2016 www.cell.com/current-biology/...
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References: docs.google.com/document/d/1V... 
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Hey Eons fans,
We just want to let you know that we’re aware of the ethical issues surrounding Burmese amber in paleontology. The specimen of Ceratomyrmex that we describe in the introduction comes from a paper by Barden and colleagues published in 2020, and the authors included the following note about it:
“The specimen - from the Hukawng Valley, Kachin State, Myanmar - was deposited in the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) prior to the 2017 military control of some mine regions (work on this manuscript began in early 2017). The fossil acquired by NIGPAS was collected in full compliance with the laws of Myanmar and China including Regulation on the Protection of Fossils of China. To avoid any confusion and misunderstanding, all authors declare that the fossil reported in this study was not involved in armed conflict and ethnic strife in Myanmar. The specimen is deposited in the public repository NIGPAS and is available for study."
We also tried to follow the guidance of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology on Burmese amber in choosing our images for this episode and not use any images of fossils/amber “collected in or exported from Myanmar since June 2017.”
Thanks for watching!
Fascinating
Respect
I was concerned when I heard Myanmar mentioned, and this is good to know, preferably a warning at the start of the video?
Good to know
What ethical issues?
Edit: Oh okay thank you, sorry I didn’t know
Ants Canada reading the title: *heavy breathing*
I was gonna comment nearly the exact Same thing! XD
Hahahah
Lololo
Hahahahaha
I honestly had a second of thinking time where I was like: AC? Is da youu?
Reign of the Hell Ants sounds like something a death metal band would use for their first album.
I believe that is exactly the conversation we were all having when thinking about episode titles.
I think of a cheaply made 80's horror flick with an hilarious story and really janky special effects.
@@eons
I was thinking late 70s and early 80s where we had an influx of huge insect horror movies.
We even had an ant one where they herded humans as cattle. They were bigger than elephants. Length-wise.
I believe it was a Pestilence album cover.
@@BlackMasterRoshi no the pestilence cover was called consuming impulse.
Oh, LOVE this video! Ant have definitely come a long way through Earth's epic history and these Hell Ants are proof! Ants are definitely our elders in the geological timescale! Ant love forever!
Huh 3 minutes
Didnt know you watched Eons
AC how about you make a hell ant colony
AC about to revive hell ants and make a colony of them.
I was expecting this comment
"Dad, do you know why the hell ants went extinct?"
"What the hell are you talking about? There's ants everywhere."
Nice joke
Ha! Good one!
Best dad joke/play on words. *Ever*
Phrasing!
Hahaha funny joke
"Where'd the hell ants go?"
Hell, obviously.
@DrDiabeetus - Legendary name.
The hell pigs also live in hell now.
Antarctica
Perfect example of my point..
The dinosaurs are at hell
Can you guys do the dire wolves again? Because of the new discovery with them NOT actually being related to wolves at all, but the similarities is because of convergent evolution
I agree, I would like to see about that discovery
I second this
3rd this
I 4th this
When I heard about that, I was suprised at first. Am I disappointed? No! If anything Dire wolves are way cooler now! Originally they were just boring old wolves but bulkier. But now they're known to be big, badass dogs whose ancestors entered America way before wolves did! And hey, we can still call them Dire wolves even tho they actually aren't. The modern maned wolf also has wolf in its name but it's not even close. XD
I'm so excited to learn about our modern ants' ANTcestors.
Damm hon you got puns!!!
Oh stop your ANTics
I'm antxious...
Check out ants Canada
10/10 pun right there
Eons: Look at his weird-jaw ants
Me, an intellectual: Ah yes, the Habsburg ants
*LAUGHS IN EGYPTIAN PHAROH ANT*
And you, my friend, win this week's best RUclips Comment Award.
LOL - I mean, species only differentiate thanks to a certain level of inbreeding, right? >__
Lmao, you definitely won this comments section. Now I'm trying to imagine the hell ant version of Philip II, ensconced deep in the bowels of the ant Escorial, sending innumerable missives to all his underlings via pheromone laced leaves
I. Am. DECEASED 💀🤣😂
Fun fact: their horns are also infused with iron.
Also technically there's another insect with vertically moving headgear - the rhino beetle.
And we know that small colonies of solitary hunting ants of lower eusociality are viable because they still exist in many parts of the world, for instance: Australia's bull ants.
Australia’s bull ants are not the best example as they do form colonies of hundreds and sometimes thousands of workers with higher levels of eusociality. Again there are some species of them with lower levels but I think not the best example. Better examples are Nothomyrmecia, Harpegnathos , Dinoponera as well as Gigantiops destructor some of these will even fight sister workers for prey items and are strictly solitary foragers.
@@user-yj4qz5lo6k yeah it's probably the fact the these ants where strong enough to forge on their own and the hell ants some species probably had a powerful sting to effectively take out their prey or utilizing their jaws to kill their prey
If only they had the power of friendship
Whoa , Princess Celestia was right the whole time!
As a Satan worshiper.. I couldn't agree more.
No one will understand this meme:
*_F R I E N D S H R I M P P O W E R_*
Steve,
We all miss you as an Eontologist.
Sincerely,
An Eons fan
Life hasn't been the same since Steve got eaten by hell ants. :(
StEEEeeeve!
It's weird not hearing his name at the end of these videos. But I hope he's doing okay...
What happened to him?
I haven't the slightest clue
Imagine waking up to find these guys stealing your crisps
I'd nope right on out of there.
They can have them. I'm not fighting hell ants (or anything called 'hell') for a few chips.
@@sbennett2435 call doom slayer.
@@holom2076 doom exterminator
@@kennethfung3618 lmao
Surprised these little critters didn't make a comeback in 2020.
Maybe they did, and now they're just biding their time to strike at the perfect moment.
Probably killed off by the Murder Hornets.
@@cadenrolland5250 Hooray for Murder Hornets?
@@cadenrolland5250 They're gonna team up... Lol
I'm just glad these things are no longer around, though we still have to worry about fire ants
Brimstone ants are evolving as we speak
I like ants they aren't bad creatures. If u want to see how great they really are watch the channel antscanada. It honestly made me change my mind about most insects
Fire ants may be painful, but then there's bullet ants, who rightfully earn their name. Honestly I'd rather get burned by a match than get fricking shot.
And velvet ants. They're technically a ground dwelling wasp, but still scary as heck.
You never know. Ants are pretty small creatures and not every square inch of the earth has been discovered and analyzed.
As a person who's been fascinated with insects their entire life, The idea of hell ants just blows my mind
but them theres still living arthropods with that same setup thats blowing my mind
HELL ANT ARENT DEADV I SAW ONE AS KID
Same here! For instance, if your solid definition of dragon includes a quadruped with wings- six limbs or greater, arthropoda is the place to look.
Chicken or you misidentified another species of ants.
Why tho
Thinking of Kurzgesagt, Ant Wars in the Cretaceous must have been intense!
I was thinking the exact same thing!
where's episode 3?! 😭
I thought this was the final episode 😭
Once upon a time, there are Great Ant Wars.. the factions include Hell Ants, Heavenly Ants, Beast Ants, Wizard Ants, and (Regular) Ants.
@@KalaSemana but that all changed when the fire ants attacked
Let me be the thousandth person so say that "The Reign of the Hell Ants" is a pretty killer heavy metal album title.
That would also be a great name for an age of empires like game where instead of humans you have armies and empires of insects
varun Pal - “Empires of the Undergrowth” ? :D
@@UGNAvalon or maybe ' age of arthropods'!
@@varun-xu8gv - Trademark that idea immediately!
So the sterile ants never had their own offspring and became ant aunts.
Yep! Generally speaking, all ants, and some bees and wasps (honey bees and stingless bees for example) are eusocial, and therefore the only reproductive of the colony is the queen and any of the males, or drones. This is because the worker caste develops such that the ovaries aren't as large and they don't develop the canals capable of mating. Workers can therefore not produce diploid (female) offspring, but they can produce male offspring on occasion (as males in Hymenoptera, which are bees, wasps and ants, are actually diploid). Most of the time male offspring born from anybody but the queen are killed though. There is some exceptions, for example there is a parasitic subspecies of honey bee in south Africa that can produce thelytokously, essentially cloning itself to create another female that can also clone itself, but for the most part only the queens are capable of laying eggs.
Brits won't get this joke.
Double thumbs up
For the well worded science joke and the informational response 😁
that only really works in the US and Canada - in other countries the two words have different pronunciations
"Where'd the hell ants go?"
In the ground, duh.
Where the hell did the hell ants go?
I guess you could say these ants are... ant-ique
I know right?
Joke was so bad you got the channel to like your comment
And the way those jaws curve up is quite... eleg-ant
All these sharp pokes and edges make me feel all antsy.
Their tusks should make them be called hell-eph-ants
I ANTicipate that there will be a lot more puns in this thread
The idea that high specialisation might be the reason for extinction is quite realistic.
Sorta tells you just how vulnerable humans are. We think we're an immortal species because we're so "adaptable". Right. One good EMP or super solar flare or 6-mile asteroid and there goes 95% of our technology. Ten thousand years ago, our ancestors could tough it out in sub-glacial conditions with just a couple of fur wrappings, a sharp stick, and a piece of flint. Now we're so flabby, slow, stupid, and disconnected from the natural environment, and have conflated our population to such domineering numbers, you can be sure the collapse of humanity will rival that of the dinosaurs. Who knows? Maybe in 25 million years some new intelligent species entering its own industrial epoch will be using OUR liquified remains for fossil fuel.
It’s what has led to the extinction of most species
It's happened multiple times in history
@@davidanderson2357 You're half right. Surely a event of that magnitude will cause the deaths of billions and the total destruction of our modern way of living, but... that's not total extinction. There is still people in the world that lives without a hint of modern technology, so humans as a species are pretty safe for that kind of cataclism.
imagine if ants were around during the carboniferous
I don’t wanna...
*MEGA ANT*
So 1950s sci-fi?
Their advanced eusociality would give them basically no competition on land. Evolution of life on Earth would be changed forever.
@@sion8 *THEM*
Modern ants do not always live in huge colonies, primitive ants similar in behavior to “Hell ants” still exist such as Nothomyrmecia and Harpegnathos
Yeah, that's what I was thinking during the all video, "why don't you talk about the most basal ants that live today, in small colonies, with little differenciated castes? That ressemle a lot the hell ants...." XD
@@krankarvolund7771 I also patiently waiting her to mention about basal ant like bulldog ant that live in small colony, hunt with eyesight rather than pheromone, the worker is actually fertile, etc.
Myrmecia is my favourite genus!
@@bronhaller They sure are neat, I’m current keeping a queen of Myrmecia nigrocincta, very primitive they can even walk on your hand, jump distances ~3cm and observe you with their large eyes.
@@muhamadsayyidabidin3906 Myrmecia workers are not always fertile but they do indeed have ovaries so they can actually become fertile, it’s been studied in Myrmecia pyriformis where workers can become gamergates (fertile workers) often after the death of their queen. Some Myrmecia colonies do actually have pretty big colonies too but their behavior as you said is still super primitive.
The hell ants remind me of Australia's bulldog ants. Small colonies and deadly hunters.
You might consider an episode on those.
Plot twist: hell ants didn't go extinct. They simply became fire ants.
So.. they're evolved.. but backwards?
@@KalaSemana actually, fire ants are among the most successful species in history.
@@Bubba22able Well, evolution is about survival of the fittest, not the chaddest.
Hehehe welcome to plotlania
Had I seen those Hell Ants today, I would have been like "HELL NO!"
Everybody gangster till the ants get that big
It's the resulting ant-eaters that worry me.
Go to Australia, bull ants are of similar behavior and size 🤣
Only Eons could cheer me up with... "Hell Ants " lol
Every prehistoric cartoon ever: Anything prehistoric had saber teeth.
Me: That’s silly
PBS Eons: In the past ants had horns.
Me: .......
"Hamilton's Rule of Kin Selection" def sounds like something I'd see on tumblr in 2016
"The animal species, in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development, are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress."
~Pyotr Kropotkin, Zoologist and the father of Anarchism
😂
lol, in a Crusader Kings 2 guide? xD
not to be confused with Jefferson's Rule of Miku Binder, of course
@@cheaterman49 The "kin" subculture basically refers to people who claim to be carrying the spirit of something else. It's weird and complicated and tends to crop up in the more "terminally online" sectors of the internet.
This channel is a jewel to me. One of the best on RUclips. Thanks for your hard work PBS 😊
“Why aren’t eusocial?” I don’t have an ANTswer for that
So interesting. I wonder, since the jaw-horn combo seems pretty useful for grabbing and holding on to prey, maybe the ants left their small colonies to go on solo hunting trips, trapping and carrying their prey back to the nest? It's such an odd adaptation.
really love these PBS Eons videos. Short, informative and so relaxing to watch.. Great work by all involved.
One of the best channels on youtube by FAR
"This is the vanguard of an ominous killing machine, behind them is an army of half a million others, marching through the forest stripping its prey to the bone..."
Would love to see more videos on prehistoric flora and how plants have evolved over time.
Oooo yes, follow one lineage through time!
I wait all week for these episodes! It's my substitute to Animal Planet
Yeah, which seems to have gone all worthless reality programming as everyone else.
Thank you so much for this episode! I have been curious about ant evolution for a long time
This channel is awesome. You learn a lot in a short amount of time.
Always a pleasure to see PBS Eons posted something new.
I absolutely love how much we can learn and speculate only from fossils , bones and in this case two insects trapped in amber
This goes for all the episodes you’ve produced: I LOVE THEM! This is easily one of the best channels on RUclips. True, informative and always interesting. Thanks 🙏🏻
It's an entire studio. Callie just narrates
@@QUBIQUBED yes I’m well aware. You can mean one or many persons.
In LeBron's words: "Its about damn time"
The specimen looks incredibly well preserved! Could you get a full adn sequence from that?
"an ancient ancestor of cocroaches"
Go get em Hell ants!
See if the hell ants had done a better job we wouldn't have cockroaches today!
i love all those strange creatures of the past
"Where'd the Hell Ants go?"
In my kitchen cupboards, that's where the Hell they went.
*click EEEEEEEYYYYY
Guys I've received a package from Satan and I can't wait to show you this flaming skull terrarium. Guys I can't wait to show you this brand new colony. Welcome to the AC Family.
@Eastern fence Lizard ayo??
The devil you say!
@Eastern fence Lizard lmao
All the uncultured peanuts: *D E V I L*
So glad that you guys did another video on insects!!!!! Was waiting for one for ages. Would be great to see a video on wasps someday. Maybe that'll help clean their bad reputation among the general public!!!!
Good to see an episodes on ants, know very little about ant evolution, thank you for the vid :)
Omg I love ants!! This is my favorite episode.
Could it be that the mandible orientation was not as effective, so they were eventually out-competed?
20 million years is still one hell of effectiveness (no pun intended)
Interesting thought: evolution may have found a local maxima there which it couldn’t turn around from.
a new video right before going to sleep 😪. thanks eons 😊👍
Ive waited SOO long for an ANT related video
PBS Eons: "Reign of the Hell Ants"
Me: "im sorry the WHAT NOW"
Could you guys do an episode on the ethics and history of paleontology? I know of the extensive history regarding colonial fossil collecting and artifact appropriation, so I was wondering if there could be a video (or maybe video series) about the modern ethics of fossil/artifact collecting and how museums and other cultural institutions can promote and protect the interests of other cultures while still pursuing the scientific studies of paleontology and archaeology?
It's a worthy subject, but I suspect it would end up being easily the least watched thing on this channel. It's an internal ethical issue and not something the general viewer will find interesting.
They have a bit at the end of nearly every video about the ethics of appropriated specimens and the origins of the specimens discussed in the video. In this video, though, there is an explanation of the use of Burmese amber in the post pinned to the top of the comments. They are well aware of this topic and have addressed it in every video I have watched with research and specimens snatched from colonized and tribal lands. But perhaps a brief video would help underscore the topic for people who don't read the disclaimers.
@@bentilbury2002 - This IS PBS. They are not interested in making a profit.
I love the insights that this channel provides, for the most obscure extinct species
If I keep watching your videos, I might just know more than I did'nt when I was born! Thanks!
Whenever I see insect videos on this channel, I wonder how spiders evolved and what that fossil record looks like. I'd like to learn more about that
Richard Dawkin's 'The Selfish Gene' helped explain a lot of Ant behavior to me
This is a hell of an episode!
It made me think about the mammals that have also gone extinct which used a similar hunting method such as the saber toothed tiger, etc. and wooly mammoth from before the Quaternary extinction event.
I really wouldn't mind seeing an animated reconstruction of how those jaws worked, because I am having a hard time figuring out how they consumed their prey.
With relish, one supposes. Unless they had a tendency to experience poor digestion, in which case they always carried around a roll of -- wait for it....
....ant-acids.
I’d love to know more about evolution of plants.
What were the first plants on land ? Where did they come from ?
Like always great thanks to your team.
Such fascinating creatures. Love watching their social systems at play.
Ants are incredibly interesting and I think it's is important to note that modern ants include species that are more like a basal wasp ancestor than other ants. Colony size depends on the niche occupied by a a colony and on the colony lifecycle. I think that hell ant foragers being less common in amber than other species could indicate that they occupy a niche or lifestyle that has a lower chance of foragers coming in contact with resin
Possible lone hunting or subterranean ....
I missed eons so much 😭😭😭.
Love this channel man
Hell ants?! I know I've said this more than once but I love it when there's an episode on a taxonomic group that I never heard of, before! Now I'm off to search for any more visuals and scientific literature on the jaw mechanics of those Hyphydrus elegans beetles.
Isn’t the point that ants care for the children of others a moot point since all ants are basically siblings so they are technically even closer related to the larvae then they ever could be to their own offspring.
Yeah, I think that natural selection in ants colonies is not really on individuals but on colonies themselves ^^
Pretty sure they’re called chimera ants.
Common names vary depending what ever someone chooses to call them, only the Latin/binomial names are solid
@@user-yj4qz5lo6k it’s an anime reference
Why not chimaerants?
@@sanguillotine HxH, right? Lol
@@Kuwagumo yes
Can you guys do more videos on human evolution? I find it so facinating!
As always, enjoyed!
5:28 looks like at least one of the individuals within the amber is an ant that resembles modern ants
Eons uploads a new video 🙂
It’s about insects 😀
It’s 11 minutes long😃
Callie is narrating 😁
Really great program!
This channel is really the ANTSwer for everything
Just finished my personal statement for Uni, I even mentioned this magnificent channel and how much I watch it! Wish me luck! 🤞
Good luck dude! I hope you study something that fascinates you!
@@lewisleslie2821 Thanks man!! And so far I've gotten an offer to study Paleontology (my dream!!) and Environmental Earth Science :)
Yes.
"Where the hell ants go?"
You always got great videos 😊
Been waiting for an ant episode for so long!
Antswers to questions I didn’t even know I had...
hell ants, wow that's a name lol
Excellent as always!
Thank you for another great documentary, this time on hell ants and ants, presented in a way to arouse our interest, and no wonder: it is interesting to look at animal societies to see how they manage to get things right for themselves! Plus they've been around for so long we'll need tips for ourselves although at the moment we are making a mess of things as a species...Furthermore, I am fascinated how older discoveries are reevaluated by more recent knowledge to shed new light on them.
- "we're still trying to figure out why they're gone"
- cause it's better that way?! :D
the horn reminds me of the parasitic mind control fungus on ants
Hi, I was wondering if you guys had already done a video about the first insects that came to land because I couldn't find it.
Very cool! Thanks for the info!
Nice try, attempting to convince me that 1995 was 25 years ago...
No, it was 26.
Hell ants are like a Pokémon design that went horribly wrong.
This one was really good, love eons
ants are very underrated in terms of evolutionary history despite the fact that there history is full of interesting bits and pieces
Yasssss.... and most of those bits and pieces used to be other creatures.
@@davidanderson2357 insects are just facinating in general
2:50 *screams in Hindi*
Probably in the Amazon somewhere that’s where they always are
This history of arachnids would make a great video for this channel
Excellent program thank you