They Run the Earth

Here’s a program from our archives.

In the next few minutes we’re going to follow the advice of an ancient proverb and “consider the ways of the ant.” I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

ambience, ant stridulations

We’re listening to highly amplified sounds of a colony of ants.

Wilson: We tend to think of ants as being of no importance except occasionally to be a nuisance, but in fact they’re much more important for the environment than we are.

Edward Wilson is Baird Professor of Science and Curator of Entomology at Harvard University.

Wilson: If all human beings were removed the environment wouldn’t be disturbed at all, in fact it probably would return to a much more stable and rich condition, to the kind that existed a hundred thousand of years ago. But if you were to remove all the ants it would be chaos. We would find that the ecosystems of the land would be radically changed, that hundreds of thousands of species of plants and animals would go extinct. How is this possible? Well, the reason is that ants are so abundant, making up ten percent or more of the biomass of all the animals on the land, and so influential, turning more soil than earthworms, scavenging most of the dead insects, serving as a principal predator of other insects and small creatures, altering the environment in many ways, protecting many kinds of plant species and other small animal species that they keep within their society, that if ants were to be removed, it would have a catastrophic effect on the formation of soil, on the removal of dead animals, even on the pollination of some plant species. And therefore, we should be looking at them in a different light, what I like to call as ‘the little things that run the earth.’

This archival program is part of our thirtieth anniversary celebration. If you want hear more, check out our podcast. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

They Run the Earth

What would happen if all the ants on earth disappeared?
Air Date:03/10/2022
Scientist:
Transcript:

Here’s a program from our archives. In the next few minutes we're going to follow the advice of an ancient proverb and "consider the ways of the ant." I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. ambience, ant stridulations We're listening to highly amplified sounds of a colony of ants. Wilson: We tend to think of ants as being of no importance except occasionally to be a nuisance, but in fact they're much more important for the environment than we are. Edward Wilson is Baird Professor of Science and Curator of Entomology at Harvard University. Wilson: If all human beings were removed the environment wouldn't be disturbed at all, in fact it probably would return to a much more stable and rich condition, to the kind that existed a hundred thousand of years ago. But if you were to remove all the ants it would be chaos. We would find that the ecosystems of the land would be radically changed, that hundreds of thousands of species of plants and animals would go extinct. How is this possible? Well, the reason is that ants are so abundant, making up ten percent or more of the biomass of all the animals on the land, and so influential, turning more soil than earthworms, scavenging most of the dead insects, serving as a principal predator of other insects and small creatures, altering the environment in many ways, protecting many kinds of plant species and other small animal species that they keep within their society, that if ants were to be removed, it would have a catastrophic effect on the formation of soil, on the removal of dead animals, even on the pollination of some plant species. And therefore, we should be looking at them in a different light, what I like to call as 'the little things that run the earth.' This archival program is part of our thirtieth anniversary celebration. If you want hear more, check out our podcast. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.