A WINNING FORMULA
These incredible organisms feature in the first episode of Sir David Attenborough’s new show, The Green Planet, which is available to watch now on BBC iPlayer.
THE LEAF-CUTTER ANTS RELY ON THEIR FUNGUS FOR FOOD. WHY DON’T THEY JUST CUT OUT THE MIDDLEMAN AND EAT THE LEAVES THEMSELVES?
Digesting plant material is a difficult process, even for us humans. It’s a hard thing to do.
Think about herbivores, carnivores and omnivores, and just look at, for example, the lengths of their intestines. If you take a tiger – a carnivore – the length of its intestines is about six metres. But if you look at a cow – the perfect example of a herbivore – the intestine is about 24 metres long, and cows also have multiple stomachs. It’s a long process to digest plant material, and you need lots of different bacteria to help you do it.
Plants have this defence mechanism: an enormous cell wall around their cells to protect them from being eaten. It takes a lot of energy to get to the parts in the plants that we actually need – the nitrogen and proteins. But there
