Fascinations: Animal Farms

       Several insects and other animals intentionally “farm” algae, fungus, roots, or other animals.  These critters nurture, tend, and protect their crops and livestock like any human farmer. 
       With apologies to George Orwell’s Animal Farm for co-opting his famous title, the following are a selection of fascinating animal farmers with action videos of each animal.

ANTS lead our star cast as two types of farmers: aphid milkers and fungi growers.

       Many ant species herd aphids and milk them for a sugary substance called honeydew.  They “milk” the aphids by stroking them with their antennae.  
       The ants also secrete a chemical that tranquilizes the aphids, making them easier to herd, and sometimes bite off mature aphids’ wings to keep them from flying away.  
​       The aphids also benefit.  Ants protect their aphid herd from predators and move the aphids to new “pastures” when the plants they’re grazing dry out.

       Leafcutter ants harvest pieces of leaves and carry them back to their burrows.  They stack the leaves carefully, smear them with fungus spores, and protect them with antibiotics, creating enormous underground fungus farms. They feed the nutritious, fuzzy white fungus to their young. 
       These ants can carry 50 times their body weight with their jaws—the equivalent of a human carrying two cars in their mouth.  They can also defoliate an entire tree in 24 hours. They've been farming since the Cretaceous Era. 

Other fungus farmers:

       The marsh periwinkle, a type of water snail, farms fungi in the leaves of cordgrass.  They slit the grass then "plant" nutritious fungi spores.
       These cordgrass farms not only provide food for the periwinkle, but keep them safe from predators hunting them in the water. 

       A group of tropical termites use bits of plants to create underground “mushroom gardens.”  In these climate-controlled “fungus combs,” the mushroom fungus breakdowns down plant fiber the termites can’t digest.  The fungus depends on the termites for cultivation, and the termites eat nutrient-rich nodules produced by the fungus.

       Ambrosia beetles bore through dead or dying trees to plant their nutritious fungal gardens.
       They carefully tend their hidden garden galleries; the ambrosia fungi they grow feeds both adults and larvae.

Algae farmers:

       The longfin damselfish farms algae, a simple plant-like organism.  The delicate turf algae these damselfish cultivate and defend rarely exists outside of their coral reef farms.
​       They regularly weed out undesirable algae and cultivate “domesticated” shrimp to help tend the algae crop.

Females of the relatively large owl limpet mollusk cultivate and aggressively defend algal mat “gardens.”   They live on and graze from these mats of red algae, fertilizing them with the slimy mucus trail they use to locomote. 
​       Owl limpets start life as males and become farming females later in life.

Root farmers:

       Humans consume many root vegetables: potatoes, carrots, radishes, beets, onions, sweet potatoes, turnips, and parsnips, among others. T
       The only other mammal on the animal farmer list, pocket gophers, also cultivate edible roots.  They tend “root cellars’ in their extensive burrows, fertilizing them with their own waste.
       The roots they graze in their tunnels grow back stronger and healthier than those outside their care. 

Thank you to my friend Noël for our conversation on ant farmers that inspired this exploration of our animal cousins who cultivate their own food. 

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Read more fascinating animal facts:
If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal, What a Fish Knows, The Genius of Birds, An Immense World,
Plant-Animal Hybrids, Animal Emotions, Cat Gods & Myths

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