The Americas' Tom Hanks Explains Horrifying “Wow Factor” of Amazon Army Ants (WATCH)
The nomadic destruction of army ants gives Tom Hanks the willies.
As part of its epic 10-part journey across the American supercontinent, The Americas takes viewers into the heart of the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest and a hotbed of biodiversity. It covers 40 percent of South America, spans 9 countries, and is fed by a massive river with 1,100 tributaries. Water constantly reshapes the landscape, but it doesn’t do it alone.
The Amazon is an environment populated by 15-foot snakes, giant river otters hunting in the world’s largest river, and wetlands populated by capybara, the world’s largest rodent. It’s a world of giants, but you can’t get the full picture without paying attention to the tiny critters underfoot.
The rainforest is filled with insects, spiders, and other creepy crawlies from top to bottom. Ten percent of all species on Earth are in the Amazon and about 90% of those are insects. It’s a bustling metropolis in miniature with millions of insect species, among them is one of the most fearsome hunters on the planet: the army ant.
When army ants come to town, you move out, stay perfectly still, or die
They arrive in a part of the forest by the thousands and consume tens of thousands of prey animals, mostly other insects, every day. The worker ants are blind, but their sense of touch is impeccable, and they work together to consume everything in their path. The only way to survive is to stay perfectly still.
If a single ant senses your presence, it attacks, sending out a signal to call for reinforcements. Prey animals are stung with a venom that immobilizes and liquefies, torn limb from limb, and carted back to the nest.
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"I'm not saying it was easy to watch the army ants swarm all over a cricket, sting it with toxins, liquefy its insides, and butcher it piece by piece, and carry bits of that cricket back to their nest. And yet I did, and I will never forget it,” said series narrator Tom Hanks. “And yes, it may haunt me for the rest of my days, but at least, you know, at least it came from our own world and is another example of brilliant filmmaking. It's a constant wow factor, and it's a delightful wow factor."
Once they’ve cleared their patch of forest, the ants build bridges with their own bodies, crafting a road back home. Unlike most other ants, army ants don’t build a permanent nest. Instead, their home is what’s known as a bivouac, roughly half a million ants clinging to one another into a temperature-controlled structure built from their own bodies. Once they’ve consumed everything in sight, the bivouac disassembles, and the colony moves on in search of a livelier locale.
Army ants are nomadic predatory foragers running raids on the rainforest
The name army ant is given to over 200 species of ant, each of which uses a similarly aggressive predatory foraging style. Army ants may have evolved from earlier species of non-army ants living in small colonies. As their raiding foraging tactic evolved, colony sizes swelled until they reached truly staggering sizes.
Most ants send out scouts in search of food. If they find something, they go back to the nest and return with backup to collect the loot. Army ants, by contrast, all move out together and simply consume everything in their path.
"I know you're not keen on the army ants... I have filmed them before, and you just have to make sure tape around your legs so they don't crawl up inside your trousers," said The Americas Executive Producer Mike Gunton. "They bite and they sting. So, they bite you first and then they sting you where they bit you."
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The behavior of army ants fluctuates between a nomadic period and a stationary period, with the whole cycle lasting about a month. The nomadic phase begins about 10 days after the queen lays eggs. This period, during which the colony is on the move, lasts about 15 days while the larvae develop. At night, they form a bivouac but during the day, the ants go hunting for insects, spiders, and small vertebrates to feed the brood.
Soon, the larvae spin their pupal cases and no longer need to be fed. From then, the colony will stay in one place for up to three weeks. They go on fewer raids and they only feed the queen while she grows and lays a new batch of eggs, 3 to 4 million of them. When the pupae emerge from their cases and the eggs hatch, the cycle continues with a new batch of workers, a new litter of babies, and a new nomadic phase.
While army ants are often seen as a source of near pure destruction, an example of the sorts of vicious and deadly encounters happening in the wild world, they aren’t all bad. Some species of bird have learned to follow army ants, picking off fleeing prey from the fringes. And once they’ve packed up and left an area, they leave behind a lush patch of forest full of niches ready to be filled.
“Yes, it is shocking. Yes, it is up close, but it's beautiful,” Hanks said.
Where to watch The Americas
The Americas debuted with a special two-part premiere on Sunday February 23, at 7:00 p.m. ET. Viewers were treated to a documentary double feature two weeks in a row, following a schedule change. Future episodes will air Sunday nights on NBC and are available for streaming on Peacock the following day.
