All through the animal kingdom,
creatures find different ways to get along.
Why do cockroaches develop and reproduce more successfully
in a large group?
Bonobos are prolific lovers,
but how has that become a form of conflict management?
How has networking helped ants build their communities?
How are meerkats like the military?
These creatures live strong by getting along.
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They live in filth.
They spread disease.
And they're pretty much the most unwelcome house guest around.
Many people want them dead,
but cockroaches are masters of survival.
Cockroach-like fossils called roachids
have been found dating back 300 million years.
But the modern-day cockroach that we know and loath
has only been around since the Cretaceous period,
a mere 145 million years.
Today, there are 4,600 different species of cockroach
and they can be found in all parts of the world,
except the polar regions.
Only 30 of those species live among humans.
They are incredibly hardy.
A cockroach can survive for weeks
after its head has been chopped off.
And like many other insects has a higher resistance
to radiation than other vertebrates.
For them, a lethal dose is six to 15 times higher
than it is for humans.
The cockroach may not be popular,
but it is clearly doing something right.
>> Cockroaches have been around for many, many millions of years
and scientists believe that that maybe due to the fact
that they have just settled into a role in their ecosystems
that's really well-suited towards them.
That role includes eating
rotting, decrepit decomposing material.
And turning it into nice rich soil.
Cockroaches owe part of their survival
to good communication skills.
Many species live together in groups
in moist, damp, and dark places.
They're moist and kind of sticky themselves,
that's how they communicate
with all of their fellow cockroaches.
To recommend all the hottest new places to eat.
>> The cockroaches are covered in almost like an oil,
it's almost like a pheromone trail
for others to find.
So wherever they go, they kinda leave a trail.
So it helps the other ones find where they're gone
if there's food sources.
And that's where home is.
>> Most insects have sensory organs on the head end
of the body, particularly the antenna and the mouth parts.
And these are the organs by which they sense both their food
and the environment around them
via chemicals that are called pheromones.
>> They also use their antennae as a way to cuddle.
Young cockroaches need to be in constant contact
with each other to properly develop.
Cockroaches also have the ability
to recognize their own family members.
Even living in societies
with different generations of family members sticking around.
That's right,
grandma and grandpa cockroach are here to stay.
Even when exterminators find a way to
well, exterminate colonies,
some species of cockroaches band together to adapt.
In the 1980s glucose traps laced with poison
were the best way to catch and kill roaches.
But within 10 years, the traps stopped working
on certain portions of the population.
Scientists learned that certain roaches avoided sweet food.
And therefore, avoided the glucose traps.
The roaches that liked sweets were all killed by the traps.
The sweet preference died out in the population.
The roaches that avoided sweets lived
and passed on the aversion.
After that, the glucose traps became obsolete.
The roaches that lived
just were not attracted to them anymore.
The cockroach's aversion to sweets spread so quickly,
because they reproduce so frequently.
In this case,
the change in the population was expressed in just 10 years.
Cockroaches not only reproduce quickly,
they mate with whomever they like.
In bee colonies, only the queen can mate.
But cockroach colonies are far more egalitarian,
giving every cockroach the opportunity to reproduce.
>> The oothecae or the egg sac of cockroaches
is generally an oval or elongate structure.
And it has segments in it
and it's like the portions of an orange.
And inside one of those pouches can be anywhere from eight
to about 15 or 20 individual little baby cockroaches.
>> A female roach can produce up to eight egg cases
in her short year of life,
providing the world with up to 400 more cockroaches,
the miracle of life.
Female roaches actually reproduce faster
when they have other females to socialize with,
another benefit of being part of the group.
So while they may seem disgusting to us,
cockroaches deserve some respect
for being true masters of survival.
And for doing it all with a little help from their friends.
(Projector rolling)
Bonobos are a promiscuous species,
less aggressive than their relatives.
They've been able to get along with each other by making love,
not war.
Bonobos along with chimpanzees are our closest cousins.
Our ancestors split with theirs
between 4 to 7 million years ago in Africa.
And while many humans try to work out problems
with a lot of fussing and fighting,
bonobos have come up with a different solution, sex.
When they get angry, they have sex.
When they get scared, they have sex.
If they have a bone to pick, just relax,
nothing a little roll in the hay can't fix.
>> If somebody's done a wrong thing,
you wanna apologize, you have sex.
If you're happy, you have sex.
If you wanna play, you have sex.
And as you can imagine, it makes everybody happy.
>> They are among the very few animals
who engage in sexual behavior
for reasons other than reproduction.
And they do it for social reasons,
they ease tension in the group with sexual behavior,
they form bonds by engaging in sexual behavior.
They do something called G-G rubbing
or genito-genital rubbing
that's done among all individuals.
It doesn't matter whether it's male-female,
female-female, male-male, young-old,
they all engage in this behavior.
>> Bonobos live in matriarchal societies,
largely peaceful.
They share 99% of their DNA with their closest relative,
the chimpanzee.
Yet chimps live in patriarchal societies
and their version of conflict resolution
usually takes a much less lovey-dovey approach.
Like murder, cannibalism, and infanticide.
>> They are extraordinarily different
in their social life and their temperament.
Regular chimpanzees can be very aggressive,
they are male bonded and male dominant.
They kill other chimpanzees,
they are actually described as making war
on nearby communities.
So they're real rough and tough.
Bonobos are almost the polar opposite,
they're female dominated.
They are very peaceable.
And the standard line about them is they make love not war.
>> So how did that happen?
How could these two polar opposites
possibly have come from a common ancestor?
One theory leads us to the gorillas
and the Congo River.
For the past 2 million years,
there have been no gorillas south of the Congo River.
This is where bonobos evolved.
Not having to compete for food resources
with the gorillas,
bonobos lived a privileged life.
North of the river however, where chimpanzees evolved,
they shared the forest with gorillas.
With gorillas competing for leafy forage,
chimpanzees adapted to eating fruit and nuts instead.
But these trees are seasonal and widely dispersed.
So chimps broke into small and unstable groups,
constantly searching for precious food.
As a result,
chimpanzees evolved in a world of scarcity and competition.
Across the river to the south, life was good.
There was way more food and much less competition.
The bonobos evolved in a world of plenty,
which allowed large communities to stay intact
and in greater harmony.
That one river divided their worlds
and completely altered each species' society.
With abundant resources and little competition for food,
there was less and less need to compete
and use aggressive behavior.
This life of plenty
might have altered the sexual behavior of bonobos
and helps explain their promiscuity.
Like chimpanzees,
female bonobos have periods of sexual swelling,
a phenomenon that signals to males
that a female is ready and willing to mate.
But in their world of plenty,
female bonobos belong to larger and more stable foraging groups,
so they don't need to attract horny males
within short windows of opportunity.
Their females are good to go all the time.
Today bonobo societies are ruled by females
with high social status.
>> The females basically run the group
and they make all the calls
from where the group's going to move
to where we're going to sleep
as they provide all the discipline
basically in the group.
Males are subordinate of course
and males actually live with their mothers
for their entire lifetime.
And their social status hinges on that of their mothers'.
>> They've also maintained their sense of community.
>> In the wild, bonobos live in a social structure
called fission-fusion society.
And that means that they live in large communities,
but they don't stay together as a really large group
most of the time.
They break off into smaller subgroups
for foraging or sleeping or just palling around together.
And the composition of those various subgroups
changes over time even on a day to day basis,
depending on lots of factors
such as compatibility of individuals,
breeding, hormones, and resource availability.
>> Bonobos are living it and loving it.
Evolving millions of years ago without the presence of gorillas
might be the reason for their social structures today.
Whatever the reason,
it sure looks like bonobos have it all figured out.
Maybe because for them love conquers all.
(Projectors rolling)
Ants know a thing or two about how to get along.
They form complex social structures
using chemicals that help them survive.
Some even use these chemicals to shepherd other insects.
Ants, they are everywhere.
Inside our kitchens.
And in the outside world.
Some weighing less than an ounce
and stretching less than an inch.
These curious creatures can carry more than three times
their own weight.
As impressive as they are,
many of us would rather not have them
spoiling our picnics or infesting our homes.
But brace yourself,
all told they outnumber us by a million to one.
Feel a bit antsy?
You should.
Because these amazingly robust insects
have evolved to be highly successful
with over 10,000 species spread across the planet.
Ants are thought to be a distant cousin
of prehistoric mud dauber wasps.
But that was a long time ago.
Because the earliest ant fossils
date around 100 million years old.
And these early ants,
they were much bigger pests than today's critters.
One prehistoric ant Titanomyrma lived 50 million years ago
and was the size of a humming bird.
These giant ants are the earliest known tropical species
to make the journey from Europe to North America
during the Eocene.
Today they've colonized almost every landmass on earth.
How?
Teamwork or servitude, depending on how you look at it.
Much like their ancestors ants are a eusocial species,
which means a single queen
and a few males do all the reproducing.
While an army of multi-talented non-breeding females
does everything else.
>> Ants have very complex networks,
they communicate with each other,
they do different tasks,
they have worker ants,
ants that guard,
they have all kinds of different capabilities
in their colony.
Ants are very good at working together
to reach a common goal.
>> For ants, even the most mundane of tasks
like marching into a kitchen
and making off with a bounty of breadcrumbs leaves a message.
In their travels, they use chemicals to communicate.
>> If an individual finds a new source of food
on his return to the colony, he will lay a chemical trail.
Other recruits then will go out
in search of that new food source
to bring it back and hide it.
And then on their return with new food source,
they continue leaving chemicals.
So over time then with dozens if not hundreds
and thousands of individuals going back and forth,
back and forth,
the chemical trail then builds up,
becomes more and more concentrated.
If it's not a good food source,
then you don't have as many recruits,
the chemicals then will evaporate.
>> Chemical communication is a tool used in ant networks.
But some species use these chemicals for yet another task.
They actually shepherd aphids.
Some scientists believe ants use tranquilizing chemicals
to slow the movement of the aphids.
Sometimes they'll clip their wings for good measure.
This isn't to kill them,
it's to milk them like domesticated cows.
All the while feeding the imprisoned aphids
and protecting them from other predators like ladybugs.
So they can enjoy their sweet honeydew secretions
on tap, indefinitely.
Ants, you may avoid them, but you have to admire them.
They are social insects that form networks.
With cooperation on their side they march on, together.
(Projectors rolling)
Like a military operation
everyone in this family unit has a job to do
and the training to do it well.
Cooperation helps ensure their survival.
Those adorable meerkats, standing upright in a group,
peering into the distance on an African plane.
A whole family, every single one as cute as a button.
It's a familiar image, iconic even.
But what you may not know
is that these squirrel-sized mammals
are a lot more like mercenaries
than cute little cartoon characters at the movies.
These little guys live in an incredibly hot, dangerous,
and inhospitable environment
where predators strike from land or air.
Yet despite these hardships, they survive.
>> Living in Africa, you know,
we have rainy season that happens
and then very dry season.
These animals have evolved to be able to live underground
during the different temperature changes
that happen in Africa.
>> Over 60 million years ago,
there was a group of early carnivores
named the miacids.
The miacids are thought to be the ancestors
of many modern carnivores like dogs, bears,
and even the mongoose.
The meerkats is a member of the mongoose family.
But while most mongoose species live alone or in pairs,
meerkats work in much larger social groups
from five to 30 individuals to help them survive
the harsh conditions of the desert.
Family groups are called mobs or gangs
and every member of a meerkat family has a job to do.
While they are young, they get rigorously trained
to do every single one of them.
They have a system and it works.
>> These groups of animals raise the young
and they're almost like educators,
they teach the young survival strategies,
hunting strategies together.
And they, underground and above ground,
have different tactics and learning opportunities
in order for these animals to survive.
>> These colonies dig vast networks of underground tunnels
to hide from predators
and keep themselves cool in the sometimes deadly heat.
No water, no problem.
They can survive just fine on the moisture from the insects
they hunt.
With all the predators around,
they've developed actual warning systems.
While some family members forage,
others stay on watch for predators.
If they see one, they sound the alarm
using body language and vocalizations.
Meerkats even have predator-specific alarm calls
that signal urgency
and warn of the type of predator that is approaching.
This gives the family enough time to scurry into a tunnel
before it's too late.
This is a fine-tuned military style operation
that uses rank, communication, strategy, and hierarchy.
And it all starts with the boss, the alpha female.
She runs the show and she picks up the slack.
And she's the only female in a group
who is allowed to have pups.
>> Meerkats are colonial nesting animals
and they live in these societies
that are dominated by individual mating pairs,
meaning that only the dominant pair actually mate.
And all other members of the colony participate
in helping that mating pair rear their offspring.
>> The female alpha is the biggest, strongest,
and most highly skilled of the bunch.
After all, she has to be.
To reach the top, she has to fight all the way there.
These families work incredibly well as a team,
but strong leadership is critical,
because there is always dissension in the ranks.
>> Sometimes it does get a little tense,
especially when it comes to the hunting part.
They become aggressive, they become very food motivated.
Fighting will take place,
especially during the feeding frenzies.
But that alpha female will take that role,
because she is better at hunting
that's the number one characteristic
that takes that female to the next level
of becoming the alpha.
>> While controlling day to day operations,
she also takes brutal control
over the size and genetics of the family.
The alpha female has been known to kill pups
that are not her own,
ridding the colony of offspring from subordinate females.
Some scientists think she might do this
to reduce competition for care of her own pups.
Yep, that's what happens when you mess with the boss,
So the next time you see a photo of a meerkat family,
don't be fooled by their cuteness.
These social animals are ruthless
and skilled survivors.
They are thriving in a harsh and unforgiving environment
by being callous, efficient, coordinated, and brutal,
not by being adorable.
Even though they are really, really adorable.
(Projectors rolling)
Social systems govern the behavior of many species,
that cooperation can determine their success.
From the cockroach,
to the bonobo,
to the ant,
and the meerkat.
These are all species
that increase their chances of survival
when they work and live together.
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