H. MEDFORD: Now these ants and related species are common to most of America. As a matter of fact, you can find them in back yards, empty lots and fields throughout the temperate zones of the world. They haven't changed in either form or habits for more than 50 million years. Here for instance, is one such specimen that got himself trapped in amber, which we know is at least that old.
H. MEDFORD: Now we come to some different kind of ants. The big fellow there, feeding on the smaller red grease eaters. He's of the savage species call Camponotu Akingus Miah. He's of the desert variety, very similar to the giant mutations we found in New Mexico. There is a side view of a small nest. Those white objects are ant eggs.
H. MEDFORD: Ants don't see well at all. They hear, smell and locate objects entirely with their radar-like antennae. Only after food or an enemy is located with the antennae are the savage mandibles put to work.
H. MEDFORD: Now gentlemen, watch this demonstration of power. A pebble has blocked the entrance to the nest. That creature is determined to remove the obstacle. Note how the mandibles are used to grasp the pebble and finally pull it aside, with only a slight assist from another ant.
Now there's the same pebble on laboratory scales. Balancing it is a dish containing twenty ants. We've learned that one of these quarter inch long insects can lift twenty times it's own weight. That's equal to one of you lifting a ton and a half or more.
H. MEDFORD: Here are rare shots of a newborn queen and her consorts. Technically, she should be referred to as a princess until after the mating flight. Now there is a close shot of a winged male. The males are only equipped for survival beyond the mating and die soon afterwards. The queen flies on, or more precisely, is born by the wings until the need to seek a place to lay eggs.
OFFICIAL: Does a queen ever fly away from her nest once she's established it?
H. MEDFORD: No, never. She loses her wings after the wedding flight. See, one has dropped off now. Now she starts her function of establishing a place in which to lay her eggs and begin the nest. Queens live a quite a long time. They continue to lay eggs from the one mating from 15 to 17 years.
H. MEDFORD: Here are ants at war. As you can see, ants are savage, ruthless, and courageous fighters. This fight lasted 72 hours between those two alone. Ants are the only creatures on Earth other than man who make war. They are chronic aggressors and they make slave laborers of the captives they don't kill.
None of the ants previously seen by man were more than an inch in length, most considerably under that size. But even the most minute of them have an instinct and talent for industry, social organization, and savagery that make man look feable by comparison.
OFFICIAL: How large were the ants you found?
H. MEDFORD: The smallest measured nine feet in body length.
H. MEDFORD: That gentlemen, is why you are here. To consider this problem and I hope solve it. Because unless you solve it, unless these queens are located and destroyed, before they have established thriving colonies and can produce heaven knows how many more, Man as the dominant species of life on Earth will probably be exctinct within . . . a year, Doctor?
A doctor at the table nods his head yes.
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