The attines include the leaf-cutter ants , which began eating fungus 5 to 15 million years ago -- before humans diverged from chimpanzees. Leaf-cutter colonies have millions of members that harvest green leaves and grow fungus in football-sized gardens.

And while this "dinner" was not exactly haut cuisine, these ants of the so-called "attine" group were apparently the first animals to deliberately grow their food.

Fourth farmers of the Americas Humans, it turns out, were actually the fourth animal to discover farming. Fifty million years ago, not long after the dinosaurs took that last long sleep, lowly ants began farming, growing fungus inside their nests and harvesting it for dinner. It turns out that termites and bark beetles (no heavy thinkers here!) also grow fungi. And while this "dinner" was not exactly haut cuisine, these ants of the so-called "attine" group were apparently the first animals to deliberately grow their food. The attines include the leaf-cutter ants , which began eating fungus 5 to 15 million years ago -- before humans diverged from chimpanzees. Leaf-cutter colonies have millions of members that harvest green leaves and grow fungus in football-sized gardens.

Not bad for a bunch of people who never read a Dick-and-Jane primer. And while it was no small triumph to invent a food supply that doesn't fight back or run away, your huge primate brain should not swell at our ancestors' achievement.

Leucocoprinus subclypeolaria, a mushroom in Panama's rain forest, is a close relative of fungus grown by attine ants. © 1996, Ulrich G. Mueller, University of Maryland.



Garden of the fungus-growing ant Cyphomyrmex rimosus, from Florida. This fungus (the small yellow nodules) grows as a yeast on caterpillar droppings (the greenish balls). © 1996, Ulrich G. Mueller, University of Maryland.

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