02/13/2026
Are these the first-ever fungi farmers?🤯 These ants have been farming fungus for 60 million years… long before humans ever planted crops. 🐜🍄
While exploring Costa Rica this week, we came across one of the most extraordinary species on the planet, the leaf-cutter ant (Atta cephalotes).
They don’t eat the leaves they carry.
Instead, they use fresh leaf cuttings to cultivate a specialized fungus called Leucoagaricus gongylophorus, their colony’s primary food source.
The ants chew the leaves into pulp.
The fungus breaks it down.
And produces nutrient-rich structures called gongylidia that feed the entire colony.
This partnership is so ancient and advanced that:
• The ants cannot survive without the fungus
• The fungus cannot reproduce without the ants
• The fungus no longer produces spores, it relies entirely on the queen to carry it to new colonies
This symbiosis began roughly 60 million years ago.
And yes… they even defend their fungal gardens from parasitic fungi like Escovopsioides nivea.
Nature has been running sustainable agriculture long before we ever figured it out.
📍 Not Georgia, filmed in Costa Rica
🌿 Still fungi. Still ecosystem magic.
Did you know ants were fungal farmers? 🤯
Would you want to see more fungi-insect symbiosis content like this?
Drop a 🐜🍄 below if this blew your mind.
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