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Why leafcutter ants carry leaves they don't eat

Leafcutter ants in Central and South America haul leaf pieces bigger than themselves. You'd guess the leaves are dinner, but the ants can't digest them.

Back in the nest, they chew them into mush. A fungus, the same kind of living thing as mushrooms and mold, grows on that mush, and that fungus feeds the colony.

Ants were farming like this millions of years before humans planted their first seeds.

Source: asm.org

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