One Life Page #4

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(trumpeting)

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...and they'll discover it's time

to make their own way in the world.

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The lifelong search for food begins.

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(birds chirping)

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lmagine trying to feed

10 million hungry mouths.

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Well, that's the challenge facing

the inhabitants of this underground city.

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The city is surrounded by grassland.

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Unfortunately its citizens,

grass-cutter ants,

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can't actually eat grass.

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(crunching)

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(thumping)

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(upbeat music)

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Yet they collect

every blade of grass they can,

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and they carry it all the way back

to the colony.

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(upbeat music)

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And they do this all day.

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Every day.

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365 days a year.

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(upbeat music)

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So why are they doing it?

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The answer lies deep underground.

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(cringing)

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They chop it up and feed it to a fungus

that can eat grass.

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And then they eat the fungus.

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The anthill is a massive

underground farm.

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lt's a perfect arrangement,

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except that the fungus produces

so much carbon dioxide

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it poisons the air down here.

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The ants have sorted that problem, too.

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They've built specially designed

ventilation shafts to keep their air clean.

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They're farmers,

architects and engineers.

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Each individual ant has a brain

the size of a pinhead.

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but somehow, together,

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they have invented a solution

to feeding themselves

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that we would be proud to match.

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Sometimes in life, the best way

is to follow your own path.

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Choose food that no one else

has a taste for.

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(distant squawking)

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