Concealed among the vibrant diversity of
life on our planet, there are creatures
that operate as part of a larger unified
whole. They surrender their minds, their
desires, and their individuality to the
collective to the point where seemingly
indisputable boundaries of life are
blurred. From a million minds woven into
a single will, what emerges is a higher
order of being, one that serves a
greater purpose than any of its parts
could hope to achieve alone.
What emerges is a super organism?
But how is that possible? We've always
been told that evolution relies on
survival of the fittest. So, how can
evolution maintain groups that are so
selfless, that have given up their
ability to reproduce and pass on their
genes?
What kinds of systems start to emerge
when you reach a state of ultimate
collaboration?
I'm James Stewart and you're watching
Astramm Earth. Join me in this video as
we delve into the world of super
organisms and why some animal groups
seem to fit this description. This is an
idea we've been talking about for over a
hundred years. One that appears to defy
the laws of evolution and push the
boundaries of the life we thought we
knew. But what actually is a super
organism? What are its features? And how
on earth did this evolve?
[Music]
Although it sounds very new in space
age, the term superorganism has been
around for a while. It was first coined
by William Morton Wheeler in 1911, who
used it to describe how ant colonies
seem to act not as individuals, but as a
single unit.
If you were to organize the components
of life on a staircase, then you'd
probably put simple building blocks like
amino acids at the bottom, followed by
complex molecules like DNA one step up,
followed by organels, cells, organs,
organ systems, and finally complex
organisms like us. At that point, you'd
be at the top of the staircase, right?
Well, no. If we accept the idea of the
superorganism, then there'd be a whole
step above us at a higher level of
biological organization.
See, a superorganism is where multiple
organisms come together to act like a
single larger organism. So, you can
think of each individual as a cell and
the group as a body.
An organism made of organisms. It's
quite meta. It's hard to see how this
could have evolved, but scientists have
theorized that superorganisms are an
extreme form of cooperative group. We
see lots of examples of cooperative
groups in nature. Animals like whales
and elephants like to stick together in
a pod or a herd where they look after
each other's young and defend each other
against outside threats.
Even bacteria can cooperate. For
example, some species secrete helpful
chemical compounds like ramnolippids
which act as a kind of bacterial
lubricant to help other individuals
spread further across a surface. But
unlike these groups, scientists believe
the kinds of cooperative group that went
on to form super organisms underwent a
major evolutionary transition. Using our
analogy from earlier, they took a step
up on the staircase of biological
organization. So, how did this step up
change things? A trait that many
superorganisms have is something we call
you sociality. This is a complex social
system with four characteristics.
The first is that adults live in groups.
And as we mentioned earlier, this is
true for a lot of other animals. The
second involves juveniles caring for
offspring that are not their own. And
again, several nonusocial animals do
this, too. The third is that generations
must overlap so that newborns can be
raised whilst their mother is still
alive.
The fourth one is where things get more
specific and many scientists believe
this is the key feature of a youocial
society. There must be a reproductive
division of labor where a chosen few
individuals are allowed to reproduce and
populate the colony whilst the rest are
either sterile and can't reproduce at
all or they get punished if they do.
The term fitness describes your ability
to survive and reproduce and this is
what every living thing on Earth is
trying to maximize. So scientists were
especially shocked by the idea of
selective reproduction at first,
considering that the famous motto
survival of the fittest had always been
used to describe the fittest
individuals, not the fittest groups.
How do we explain the species
willingness to throw away their hopes of
having their own kids and help their
parents to reproduce instead? Well, the
key point is that fitness can come in a
direct or an indirect form. It turns out
for many of these youocial groups, the
indirect fitness they get from helping
their siblings is greater than any
direct fitness they would get from
having their own kids. William Hamilton
was the biologist to champion this idea.
expanding on Darwin's natural selection
into the theory of kin selection.
There are many ways that this theory is
interpreted across the animal kingdom.
For example, many of the usocial insects
are what we call haplo diploid where
males are born from unfertilized eggs.
That's the haplo part and have half the
genetic material of females who are born
from fertilized eggs diploid. Applying
some maths, we see that this system
results in female workers being related
to each other by 75%
instead of the usual 50%.
That's a higher relatedness than they
would share with any offspring they may
produce. So, you can see why it makes
more sense to help your mother queen
produce more of your super sisters than
betray the colony and have your own
kids.
Not all you social animals are haplo
deployed though. For some, it might just
be that the environment is really tough
to survive in. So, you're better off
sticking together as a group and helping
to raise your siblings rather than
trying to have offspring of your own.
This arrangement of dividing labor often
takes the form of the cast system, which
spans beyond just reproduction and sorts
individuals into different specialized
jobs within the colony. The job you go
into is determined by a mix of nature
and nurture. As I mentioned, if you're
born a sterile worker, then there's no
chance that you'll become queen. But
other roles are more flexible and depend
on environmental factors like your diet,
hormones, and pherommones.
The cast system ties in really well with
the superorganism concept. In your body,
you have cells that are reserved for
reproduction only, just like the queens
for many of these usocial species.
You also have cells that are specialized
for other jobs like nerve cells to
conduct electrical signals, fat cells
for energy stores, and red blood cells
to carry oxygen and carbon dioxide.
Well, the amazing thing about youocial
groups is that lots of them are
specialized for other jobs, too. But
instead of specialized cells, you have
specialized individuals.
With that, let's take a look at some of
the most extreme jobs on offer in
usocial colonies.
It's thought that all ants exhibit at
least some level of you sociality,
mounting to nearly 14,000 species. So,
it's no surprise that many of the
weirdest and most wonderful casts can be
found in ant colonies. In the baron
deserts of Australia, the flowers of the
mulga tree only bloom after periods of
rainfall which are few and far between.
However, Camponitus inflatus or the
honeypot ant has created a nifty
solution to this problem in the form of
a living lauard within their underground
colonies. They look like little golden
beads, but these specialized rotons are
designed so that in the event of a food
shortage, the other workers can just
stroke their antenna and be rewarded
with a regurgitated meal of stored
honey. Yum.
These ants are so jam-packed with honey
that their abdomens are the size of a
small grape. And even the local
indigenous Australians value them as a
sweet delicacy.
Another
species of this ant found in Mexico even
seems to organize its lard by honey
type. Much like an insect wine seller,
ants swollen with darker amber colored
honey are grouped together and kept
further underground in the colony whilst
lighter and more cleared honey pots are
kept separate. Scientists found that the
darker honey stores contained more sugar
whilst lighter ants store more water,
suggesting that this species likes to
keep a mix of both depending on which
resources run low. A good strategy when
you live in dry, unpredictable
environments like this one.
Sounds like a pretty good job, right?
Just stuff yourself full of honey and
hang upside down the living lauder until
there's a food shortage. How do I apply?
But this is a key example of just how
specialized these usocial colonies can
become. If you weren't living in a
group, this would be a terrible strategy
for survival. You'd be a major target
for predators with no real chance of
defending yourself or running away. But
with the protection of hundreds, if not
thousands of your sisters against any
threats, you can happily succumb to your
role of honeypot with the knowledge that
the other important jobs are being taken
care of.
Moving on from the ants storing food to
the ants that are producing it. It might
be hard to believe, but we're not the
only species interested in agriculture.
And we weren't even the first to do it.
The Aini ants are a group found in the
South American rainforest and have been
farming fungus on an industrial scale
for up to 60 million years.
It probably began when the ancestors of
this group started eating fungus,
setting an irreversible evolutionary
change in motion to the point where
nowadays the ants are completely
dependent on the fungus for protein. And
the fungi can only survive with the help
of the ants. But how does it work? Well,
it's the job of the atini ant farmers to
cultivate their fungi in subterranean
gardens. But instead of photosynthesis,
it's decomposition that produces all the
carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids they
need for food.
When a new queen leaves her natal colony
to go and start a new colony of her own,
she takes a small pellet from the fungal
garden and stores it in a special pocket
in her mouth.
This pellet is the beginning of the
fungal garden in her new colony. And
many scientists believe that this method
of fungal subsampling is the ante
equivalent of artificial selection in
the same way that humans have selected
crops over hundreds of years to maximize
yield and efficiency.
We can't forget about the queens, of
course. Like their workers, they've
undergone some pretty crazy adaptations
in order to rule. And this is
particularly true of the termites.
Once a colony is up and running, a
termite queen's abdomen can swell up to
4 in long, while her head remains the
same size. She's so large she relies
completely on her workers to feed her,
groom her, and even carry her eggs away
to be hatched.
And there's a lot of eggs to carry away.
Some estimate that a termite queen lays
around 30,000 eggs per day.
Despite this extraordinary reproductive
output, termite queens can live for
around 15 years, a hundred times longer
than any of her workers. This is pretty
amazing considering that reproduction
usually shortens your lifespan. But
scientists think this is possible due to
the low extrinsic mortality experienced
by queens. They're kept deep underground
in the royal chamber away from predators
and disease.
So, after highlighting some of the jobs
you can do in a USocial insect colony,
we're beginning to get our first hints
of why these colonies are described as
super organisms.
We've seen ants acting as energy stores
like fat cells in our bodies, food
producers like those cells and enzymes
that generate nutrients for us, and huge
queens reserved for reproduction like
our sperm and eggs.
But what if I told you it's not just
specialized cells we see replicated at a
superorganism level but entire systems.
[Music]
Professor Thomas Pradu argued that the
immune system is the defining feature of
an organism. By this logic, if we see
evidence of an immune system that spans
beyond the boundaries of single
individuals in a colony, then this would
provide strong support for the idea of
that colony as a super organism. And in
fact, we do see this in several usocial
insect groups, including ants, termites,
beetles, and the group we'll be focusing
on here, honeybees.
Social immunity describes any collective
immune defense against parasites and
it's been studied extensively in
honeybees.
These defenses may be proylactic,
meaning that they've been put in place
before exposure to disease or activated
in the event of infection, but they've
all evolved for the purpose of disease
avoidance, resistance, and tolerance.
Just like our human immune systems,
there are plenty of reasons why you'd
want an extra level of defense for your
colony. And it's no surprise that living
in a group means that it's easier for
diseases to spread. Just think back to
CO.
It's thought that individual honeybees
have just a third of the number of
immune genes as fruit flies despite
having similar immune systems.
Now, that's because the social immune
responses employed by honeybees are so
successful, they can subsidize the
immunity of each individual honeybee.
With this in mind, let's explore how the
honeybees have outsourced their immunity
to the colony level.
We mentioned those defenses that are in
place before the colony is exposed to
disease, and most of these come under
disease avoidance.
As it turns out, honeybees have come up
with some ingenious solutions to keep
their hives diseasefree,
many of which are on par with our own
defenses as humans. You might have heard
of this component in your dietary
supplements or skin care. But propolis
is a major component of the honeybee
defense system against disease. It's an
antimicrobial substance made from plant
resins, which is then combined with bee
saliva and coated over the interior
walls and nest entrance in a layer just
half a millimeter thick. Once it's
enveloped around the colony, the
propulolis layers help maintain stable
colony conditions by waterproofing,
maintaining a consistent temperature,
preventing fungal decay, and reducing
the microbial load of the hive. In more
extreme cases, propulolis can even be
used to engulf bodies that enter the
hive. Just look at this poor unfortunate
mouse. This mouse skull was found in an
apri at the University of Minnesota,
completely encased in propulolis. It's
thought that since the mouse was too
large for the bees to remove from the
hive, instead they embarmed it in a
thick layer of propulolis to prevent the
body from decaying and spreading
disease. Scientists have compared this
behavior to fagoscytosis in organisms
since it shares the same principle of
engulfing a foreign body to reduce the
spread of disease and have used it in
support of the superorganism theory. Say
a honeybee colony is exposed to a
parasite. How do they cope then? This is
where disease resistance comes into
play. And honeybees have lots of
behaviors up their sleeves to deal with
this threat. It usually starts with
something called aloe grooming. If a
foraging bee has picked up some kind of
parasite from the surroundings, then it
will begin a special grooming dance,
which encourages its hivemates to
approach. The other bees set to work
using their mandibles to comb the hairy
parts around the base of the bee's wings
where their spiracles are. This happens
to be where tracheal mites are usually
found, confirming that this behavior
serves a disease fighting purpose.
Scientists have found this behavior is
really effective, too. In a study on the
western honeybee, scientists found that
inhibiting the bee's ability to perform
their grooming behaviors resulted in
significantly higher levels of tracheal
might infestation, proving that genetic
resistance alone is not enough to keep
them healthy.
But if the bee is unlucky and can't be
cured with aloe grooming, there are
other ways to reduce the disease risk to
the colony. I'm sure you remember social
distancing from the days of CO with a
shudder. But it turns out we weren't the
only ones doing it. Honeybees also carry
out social distancing from any bees that
have been infected with disease,
shunning them from social interaction
until they become a bit of an outcast.
They do this by detecting changes to the
chemical composition of the cuticle, the
outermost layer of the exoskeleton,
which happens as a result of infection.
The silent treatment isn't just reserved
for the adults, either. The brood, which
constitutes the lava of future workers
and queens, can be removed from the
colony entirely if they're found to be
infected. Scientists can test how
effective this undertaking behavior is
with a freeze killed brood assay. They
freeze some of the brood with liquid
nitrogen, then record how long it takes
the bees to remove all the dead larae.
In some of the most hygienic colonies,
100% of the dead brood are consistently
removed within 48 hours. You can see why
this is useful. In the event of an
infection, time is of the essence. And
the faster the bees can remove infected
individuals, the less chance there is
for disease to spread to the rest of the
colony. If a bee is really sick, then it
can choose to make the ultimate
sacrifice for the good of its colony.
Scientists have observed sick bees
committing altruistic suicide where they
permanently leave the colony even though
this means certain death. This seems
like the ultimate betrayal of
self-interest, but it's often a last
resort reserved for those bees that have
no hope of recovering from their
illness. At the very least, they know
that they're doing their bit for the
colony as they fly away from home one
final time.
On a less depressing note, bees have
also developed ways to cope with the
consequences of infection with a range
of systems in place for disease
tolerance.
Going back to the cast system, it seems
one of these systems is to give certain
casts immune privilege.
Though she may not collect nectar or
raise the brood, the queen is the
essence of the colony with the
responsibility of populating the entire
hive.
So, it makes sense that she would need
to be protected from disease as much as
possible. To do this, the hive has a
special and complex structure where
those bees that have the most contact
with the outside world and its parasites
are kept furthest away from the queens
and nurses for the brood. David
Barachchi and Aleandro Chini explored
this further by taking photos of a
honeybee colony every minute for 10
hours to see how the bees moved around
the comb.
They then created estimates for the home
range of each bee group within the hive
to investigate the patterns of overlap.
Not only were the forager bees kept away
from the nurses and queen, but the bees
were also separated by age.
[Music]
This is because older bees are more
expendable with weaker individual immune
systems. For those reasons, the older
bees are given the riskier jobs like
forager, which in turn keeps them away
from the queen. This phenomenon is known
as temporal polyethism. And though it's
pretty unfair on the senior bees, it
helps to protect the key elements of the
colony from infection.
So it turns out honeybees and many other
youocial insects have whole immune
systems operating at the colony level
providing socialized medicine so that
the group can avoid resist and tolerate
exposure to disease. For Thomas Praau at
least this is sufficient evidence to say
that these groups are organisms in their
own right. But in case you're not
convinced, let's look at how all these
amazing behaviors are communicated
between individuals.
Another major system that is key to many
organisms is cell signaling. This is the
process by which complex messages about
your body's health, nutrition, and
activities are communicated between
cells, which is vital for coordinating
our responses to the world around us.
Well, if there really are super
organisms, then they would need to do
this, too. But instead of cells
communicating, it's individuals.
We know that youocial insects can't
talk. So, how are they getting these
messages across?
Before we leave the bees behind, we have
to mention one of their most impressive
displays, the honeybee waggle dance. I'm
sure you want to learn the steps, so
here's how it goes. When a forager bee
finds an especially good flower for
nectar, it rushes back to the hive to
tell its friends. It proceeds to move
its body in a figure of eight on the
vertical combs in the hive, punctuated
by a waggle run in the middle, where,
like the name suggests, it waggles from
side to side. This dance language was
first decoded by Carl vonfr nearly 80
years ago. And you'd be amazed at how
much information is crammed into one
performance.
Firstly, the direction of the food
source can be worked out from the angle
the beam moves during the waggle run. As
I mentioned, the dance floor is a
vertical piece of comb. So, if you think
of this like a clock, 12:00 is in the
same direction as the sun. 3:00 is 90°
to the sun's right and 9:00 is 90° to
its left. Secondly, the follower bees
can learn the distance to the food
source from the duration of the waggle
phase. In bee dance language, it's
broadly accepted that 1 second of
waggling corresponds to around 750 to
a,000 m in distance. Therefore, the
longer the bee waggles, the further away
the food source is.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly,
the bee's enthusiasm whilst it performs
the dance tells you about the quality of
the communicated food source. The more
intense the waggling, the better the
flower will be.
This dance language is incredible and
can serve as a backup of information for
times when it's harder to source
information about the environment on
your own or if your own information is
of poor quality.
Leaving the bees behind, sadly, we're
visiting a very different newocial
group, a mammal. In fact, the naked mole
rat has evolved to live in underground
colonies where a queen reproduces with
one of her passes. Whilst around 300
male and female workers attend to her
every need. Just like the youocial
insects, naked mole rat colonies have
been described as super organisms and
their complex communication systems are
an example that proves why. Early field
studies of these animals noted their
extensive vocalizations in the form of
peeping, chirping, and grunting sounds.
It makes sense for them to be this
chatty since the underground burrows of
Somalia and Kenya would be dark and
narrow, extending over several thousands
of meters. Also, it's not like the naked
mole rats have the best eyesight, so
they need to rely more heavily on their
other senses to communicate and ensure
that the colony can function properly.
Scientists have identified 25 different
vocalizations in naked mole rats, all
designed to communicate different
messages and elicit different social
behaviors. So, let's decipher the code
and see what some of them mean. The most
common sound a naked mole rat makes is
the soft chirp. This sounds like a chick
peeping. And scientists think that it's
used by naked mole rats to identify
themselves as they bump into other
colony members in busy tunnels.
The toilet call consists of a sequence
of four to eight chirps and has a very
specific function.
It's used by a breeding individual when
they're going to the toilet. We're still
not sure why you need a specific call to
tell everyone this, but scientists think
it could be a way to signal your status
since odicues are also an important part
of naked mole rat society.
Finally, the V trill is thought to be
used mainly between queens and their
breeding males and can be used to create
a kind of duet between the mating pair.
There are lots more sounds that we
haven't been able to cover. sadly. And
many of these serve unknown functions
that we're only just beginning to
understand. But hopefully this
demonstrates how complicated naked molat
society is and why we consider them to
be super organisms. Just like the cells
in our bodies, they can recognize
outsiders, their leaders, and each other
using calls that communicate a huge
range of complex messages. even going to
the L.
From a superorganism perspective, we've
covered their cells, their immune
systems, and their communication. But
what about their minds?
Could there be a higher level of
consciousness that you can only unlock
by renouncing your ego and losing
yourself in the group? Well, maybe, but
it's much harder for us to prove.
Superorganisms aside, it's still an
ongoing process finding proof that
individual animals are conscious. You
can't just ask a naked mole rat or a bee
if it knows that it's alive. So, we have
to use their behavior as an indicator of
their mental state. Though we have
evidence that some animals can recognize
themselves in the mirror, sadly, none of
these animals are that from youocial
groups. Beyond self-awareness, it would
make sense for you social groups to show
theory of mind, which is an awareness
that other individuals have different
thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and desires
to you. This would help you to
understand others, connect with them,
and develop complex emotions like
empathy. All important skills for living
as part of a group. This research area
is fascinating, and we could easily make
another video. Do let us know in the
comments if you'd like to see that. But
the point here is that we haven't yet
proven theory of mind in an experiment
for any of the animals we're talking
about yet, particularly insects.
So until we can fully prove
self-awareness or theory of mind at the
individual level, it seems unlikely that
we can prove it in super organisms.
It's definitely interesting to think
about though and raises some fascinating
questions. Are the thoughts, feelings,
beliefs, and desires of individuals in
these groups so aligned they possess one
unified theory of mind? Would they lose
their individual self-awareness as a
result? Are they collectively aware that
other groups will have different
thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and desires
to them? How would this affect their
collective behavior? It's mindbending
stuff.
We've come to the end of our tour of the
super oranisms, and what a journey it's
been. Discovering these creatures that
seem to sacrifice their individuality
and surrender themselves to the
collective has required us to reimagine
the definition of organism. Beyond the
level of the individual, there is now a
higher level of being, one where
supercieties work with seamless
efficiency for the goods of the colony.
their instincts so aligned you may even
start to question whether they present
an emergent group consciousness.
Thinking closer to home, there are some
features of human societies that have
led some to question, have we become a
super oranism? Think about it. Our
incredibly advanced language, culture,
and technology has allowed us to
communicate complex messages across the
globe and establish social norms. We can
find common ground with others and use
this to collaborate on complex tasks. We
can self-organize into groups with
allocated leaders. And we can form a
social identity based on the groups we
interact with the most. Many of these
skills are advanced, unique to humans
and would be highly conducive to
functioning as a super oranism.
As I mentioned, the hierarchy of
biological organization is built on the
grouping of several units to create a
higher level unit. And in the context of
superorganisms, scientists often refer
to these events as major evolutionary
transitions.
So, what do you think? Have we already
made that major transition as a human
society, or could it be something
awaiting us in the future? Let me know
down below in the comments.
There's no doubt that you social animals
have unlocked new levels of efficiency
in their societies. So there may be
things we can learn from these groups as
we expect to face new pandemics, climate
crisis, and biodiversity losses into the
future. Perhaps we need to start
thinking and behaving more like a
superorganism, relying on each other,
having species level conversations,
playing to our strengths, and ultimately
coming together to take coordinated
unified action.
The potential for learning isn't just
limited to these organisms. However,
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