From a distance
a human city can look like a colony of insects.
Millions of individuals living in close contact
cooperating to create elaborate structures.
But real insect societies are very different.
Human cities have only been around for a few thousand years
since people learned to farm crops.
But insects have been living in communities
for tens of millions of years.
Every human in a city is still an individual
but in insect societies individuals don't matter
Every insect is dedicated to the greater good of the colony
a slave to the metropolis
a devoted subject of the queen.
Here, there's no such thing as a classless society.
But most insects live solitary lives
so why do some choose the company of others?
These sawfly larvae are called ' spitfire bugs' by Australians
and it's not a good idea to annoy them.
If they get upset
they all spit out a stinging foam
and the more there are the more effective the deterrent.
They're so wrapped up in each other they even move as one animal.
But there's always one
So the rest stop, and wait
and tap their tails on the branch.
It's not impatience
they're calling to the straggler to guide it home.
Any form of social behaviour depends on communication.
Ganging together for mutual defence is a kind of social behaviour
but the great insect societies are built on a different bond
that between parents and young.
Most insects lay lots of eggs
and leave them to fend for themselves.
Some enough will survive and the rest will just die.
But some insects invest in fewer off spring
and take good care of them.
They give them the best start in life.
This burying beetle from North America is one of these model parents.
She's looking for a corpse in this case a dead mouse.
She'll meet her future mate here and between them
they dig its grave.
It takes them all night
working together to bury the mouse
but once it's safe in an underground crypt
it will feed their new family.
The beetle grubs don't have to feed themselves
their mother feeds them on predigested mouse puree.
She calls them to meals by scraping her abdomen on her wing case.
Mother and young a simple basic society.
With such tender care
they're fully grown in only five days
and they'll soon be ready to leave the grave
for the land of the living.
But some family ties are much longer lasting.
The cool damp forests of the American Appalachian mountains
hide a king of cockroach
that stays in a family group for up to three years.
They're found in rotten logs
and they only eat rotten wood
and there's no shortage of that
With so much food within reach
why would the young be so dependent on their parents?
Wood is almost impossible to digest.
Cockroaches can only break it down
with the help of microbes that live in their gut.
Without these microbes
the cockroaches could be surrounded by food and still starve to death.
The young cockroaches must get these microbes
from their parents and to do that
they must eat their parents' faeces.
As the young reaches grow, they moult and when they moult
they also lose the lining of their gut and their vital microbes.
They have no choice but to stay with their parents
without them they would die.
But such family units are the foundation of the great insect empires
where the parents never let their offspring go
keeping them as slaves for the rest of their lives.
Termites.
This towering city was built by just one family of African termites
but their families are huge
up to three million individuals living together.
The human equivalent of this castle
would be a structure twenty five times the size of the Empire State building.
Endless tunnels like streets and alleyways
and yet not a glimmer of light reaches them.
And deep in the heart of the labyrinth
lies the mother of the entire society the queen.
She's huge a massive egg laying machine.
She lays thousands of eggs every day
and she can live for thirty years.
She can't even feed herself
she has to be tended by her children.
Her consort, the king is dwarfed by her bloated body.
All the rest of the termites are sterile
they'll never have offspring of their own.
The queen secretes chemicals that stops them from breeding.
Their only choice is to become workers, soldiers, nurses, builders.
They're all blind labouring by instinct
working to a hidden plan to build the castle
that is their prison.
Three million termites use up oxygen and give off heat
so the fortress has to be fully air conditioned.
Warm air rises from the living quarters into a huge chamber
and then passes through tunnels close to the outside
where fresh oxygen diffuses in.
Now it flows down into the cooling plant deep underground.
These vanes are damp and as the air moves between them
it's cooled before passing back to the living area.
Every kind of termite mound is different but just as intricate.
And termites exist in such huge numbers
that their cities dominate the tropical landscape.
Some Australian termites can sense the Earth's magnetic field
they orientate their cities to face the rising sun
to catch the early morning warmth.
If some termites are the most advanced builders in the insect world
others can wreak the most terrible devastation.
These termites don't build their own home
they move into somebody else's.
A colony of half a million termites can eat nearly five tons of wood a year.
In the warm climate of the southern United States
termites do more than a billion dollars worth of damage each year
more than all other natural disasters put together.
And humans take it personally.
Very personally.
Most insurance companies
won't cover the cost of the devastation it's too common.
So the householder has to finance the assault on the enemy.
The house is sealed in an airtight tent this is chemical warfare.
A gas, lethal to termites brings' armageddon' for one colony.
But there are always others out there, waiting.
This battle may have been won by humans
but the war is never over.
One other group of insects has developed advanced communities
but they are very different from those of termites.
Bees, ants and wasps live in all female societies.
This swarm is a sisterhood
united in the service of their queen.
Unlike termites males form no part of this society
they're just given a brief chance to mate with the queen
then discarded.
None of these females will ever breed themselves
their sole purpose is to shepherd their new queen
as they set off to form another colony.
They surround her
protecting her without hesitation
they would lay down their lives for her.
Compared to honeybees
bumble bee colonies seem more like a village than a city
but their structure is still based on slavery.
In all bee colonies the queen rules supreme.
She's raised a workforce of daughters
and she secretes chemicals that stop them from breeding
if a worker bee dares to lay an egg of her own
the queen will eat it.
Each bee is ready to join the labour force
as soon as she emerges from her cocoon
and her job will depend on her age.
They youngest are put straight to work inside the nest
processing food and tending the nursery
looking after the grubs their sisters.
They keep them clean and make repairs to the wax cradles.
The more senior workers are allowed to leave the nest
bringing back pollen for the rest of their sister.
Bees process and stockpile this food
so that the colony will have enough supplies during hard times.
These little colonies are so efficient at gathering pollen
that humans can employ them as a workforce.
Despite all the advanced technology supporting
commercial tomato greenhouses
bumble bees are still the most effective way
to pollinate the flowers.
The bee hangs onto the flower
and shakes down every last bit of pollen.
This 'buzz pollination' is so efficient
there are tomatoes on the supermarket shelves all year
courtesy of bumble bees.
Compared to the cottage industry of bumble bees
honey bee colonies are run like factories.
But these are no ordinary honey bees.
Twice the size of normal bees
and very mean
each honeycomb is guarded
by twenty five thousand bees with an attitude.
They can stockpile enormous quantities of honey
enough to support a huge colony through bad weather.
They're so efficient
they can even survive in the highest mountain range in the world
the Himalayas.
If any honey comb was safe from theft
it should be these.
But humans have a strange addiction to anything sweet
the villagers of Nepal risk their lives to reach this honey.
They climb down the 80 metre cliff to the combs
and drive off the angry bees with smoke
just long enough to reach for the prize.
Honey is so precious that it can and does cost human lives.
Bee colonies are formidable
but nothing like as formidable as some of their relatives.
Of all the insect societies
ants are the most organized they have wars
they enslave each other they even keep livestock.
Caterpillars, bugs any insects
that secrete sweet honeydew are farmed like domestic animals.
Any other intruders are just massacred for food.
This particular kind of ant herds
the caterpillars of the Genevieve blue butterfly in Australia.
The ants nest in cracks at the base of trees
the caterpillars eat mistletoe growing at the tops of trees.
Every night
the ants herd the caterpillars up the trunk to let them feed.
And then the ants milk the caterpillars of their secretions
like an insect dairy farm.
At dawn
the ants drive the caterpillars back down the tree
and into the nest.
These caterpillars are completely dependent on their farmers
the only life they know is the company of ants.
Protected, nurtured
they even turn into pupae still inside the nest.
Though the butterfly doesn't provide honeydew
it's tolerated by the ants.
It's escorted by a farewell party and sent on its way
flying the nest for ever.
While some ants manage livestock
others farm crops
leafcutter ants have developed
from a hunter gatherer society to an agricultural one.
Their underground colonies are huge
up to eight million individuals
organized like an assembly line.
The biggest workers harvest leaves there are so many of them
they can strip a tree in one night.
A smaller, mulching caster licks the leaves clean and chews them up
but this paste isn't yet food.
It's used to grow a crop a fungus
that's only found inside these nests
and it's the only food the ants ever need.
The job of tending and planting the fungus
in their gardens is carried out by a smaller caste again.
Leafcutter ants are probably
the most sophisticated social insects of them all.
A huge metropolis based on division of labour
where an individual means nothing.
Each ant is a tiny component in the machinery of the colony
working together like clockwork.
A network of living
communicating robots that acts like a single organism.
Humans may consider agriculture their greatest achievement
the springboard to civilization
but ants have been farmers for millions of years.
And for every single human on the planet Earth
there are at least a million ants