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This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.

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The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones to the mysteries we will examine.

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Millions of years before the dawn of man, ants had learned to live in large, complex societies.

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They had also mastered the art of war.

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Since their sources of food were much larger than themselves, they killed their prey by strategic attack.

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Today, a highly aggressive, often deadly breed of ant threatens to spread like a plague throughout much of the United States.

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In the tropical jungles of Central and South America, everyday reality can have the appearance of pure illusion.

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Animated leaves seem to march down a hanging vine.

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In truth, each leaf's movement is the work of a tiny but powerful ant.

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They are known as the leaf cutters.

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Leaf cutters are the farmers of the jungle.

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One colony transports over a ton of leaves a year to its underground city.

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The leaves themselves will not be eaten.

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A fungus which will grow on the stored leaves provides the entire colony with its single source of food.

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Leaf cutter ants have tremendous strength.

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Held by the ant's powerful mandibles, a single leaf weighing as much as the ant itself will often be carried more than a hundred yards.

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To equal this feat, a man would have to carry a hundred fifty pounds in his teeth.

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Or nearly every jungle animal's survival hangs in delicate balance.

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Both predator and prey are highly affected by the slightest change in the jungle's fragile ecology.

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Food cannot be taken for granted.

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Its abundance is never assured.

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If the taper cannot find its daily requirement of buried roots and bulbs, it faces starvation.

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The tiny ant, however, has a distinct advantage over other jungle species.

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It is older, more resilient to change, and much better adapted to its unpredictable environment.

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The hollow branches of a young Sacropia tree is the favorite home of Aztec ants.

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The Aztecs have powerful mandibles and a vicious bite.

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If their tree is disturbed in any way, the entire colony will swarm out to attack the intruder.

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A foreign vine placed against the tree quickly rallies the colony in defense of its home.

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A frenzied attack will not end until the vine has been completely removed.

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The tamandua, or ant-eater, will rarely venture a visit to a Sacropia tree.

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It is content to search for termite nests high in the branches of other trees.

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Among the most legendary and feared of all jungle predators is a group of tiny, fast-moving ants.

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They travel like soldiers in well-organized columns, continually searching for food.

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The highly developed cooperation among hundreds of thousands of ants

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transforms their mobile colony into a single ferocious creature.

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They are called army ants.

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When army ants move through the jungle, they establish temporary bivwaks

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by forming a solid mass with their own bodies.

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Using their hooked feet, thousands of workers attach themselves together in successive rows.

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The rows hang down to form an intricate living wall which protects the queen inside.

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Every morning, hundreds of raiding parties set out in search of prey.

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A chance encounter with a rival species of army ants sets the stage for the day's first battle.

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Both ants are armed with sharp mandibles and a deadly sting.

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They will fight to the death.

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While raiding columns frantically hunt for other sources of food,

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a powerful bite finally cripples the opponent.

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A larger prey suffers a coordinated mass attack.

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Once it has been paralyzed by dozens of stings,

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the army ants carefully dissect their victim and carry it piece by piece back to the bivwak.

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In a single day, thousands of insects will become helpless victims of the ravenous army ant.

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Wherever raiding ants move, other animals follow along, hoping to feed on their fleeing prey.

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There are other kinds of deadly ants which live in the jungle completely alone.

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They are solitary hunters and highly efficient killers.

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For the predacious ant, a much larger katydid makes an easy victim.

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Nearly an inch long, the predacious ant will attack insects many times its size.

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Possessed of incredible strength, it can easily lift the katydid and carry it off.

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Its venom is deadly. A single sting can paralyze, even kill a grown man.

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Most of us regard ants as insignificant pests, a nuisance in the kitchen or at a picnic.

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But for many people in the United States, that attitude has undergone a forcible change.

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The problem has been caused by a tiny but fierce red ant, the fire ant.

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In fields and pastures throughout the South, large earth mounds loom above the ground,

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signaling that the invader is there. The mounds are built and inhabited by fire ants.

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The fire ant mound forms only the tip of a vast colony which can extend 20 feet underground.

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Highly aggressive, the fire ant's armament includes razor sharp mandibles for biting

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and a painful burning sting that gives the ant its name.

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Within each fire ant colony, specialized workers do nothing but build and repair.

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The work is constant. It begins when the colony is established and the mound itself must be built.

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As the colony grows, new tunnels and chambers must be added continually.

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In about three years, the mound may reach over a yard high and contain more than 250,000 ants.

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If split down the middle, the mound is revealed as an intricate network of interconnecting tunnels and chambers.

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Very deep in some of the chambers lie the developing eggs of new ants.

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The eggs are frequently moved from place to place by specialized workers.

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When the sun warms the mound, eggs are carried toward the top.

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At night or during cold weather, the developing brood is hauled deep below ground level where the temperature is warmer.

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Other workers specialize in storing food or in keeping the mound clean.

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Still others stand on constant guard, ready to sound and alert.

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The slightest disturbance to the mound instantly rallies thousands of biting, stinging ants in defense of the colony.

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The aggressive fire ants wage regular warfare on all other kinds of ants they encounter.

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Unable to see or hear, they communicate their strategy by chemical odors called pheromones.

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They rarely lose a battle.

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Wherever fire ants have spread, they have quickly eradicated native ants,

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establishing themselves as the singular species.

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Fire ants are voracious predators.

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Their colonies require a huge and regular supply of food.

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Given to attacking in overwhelming numbers, fire ants will actually delay and attack until sufficient ants have gathered to ensure an easy conquest.

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Fire ants devour insects as the mainstay of their diet.

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They also eat earthworms, grubs and spiders.

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Fire ants attack beneficial insects as well as harmful ones.

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They are indiscriminate killers.

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In many parts of the South, vast areas are scarred with more than 200 fire ant mounds per acre.

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In the United States, fire ants have no natural enemies.

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At present, there is no way to stop them.

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Today, fire ants infest more than 150,000 ants.

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Today, fire ants infest more than 150 million acres in nine southern states, from North Carolina to Texas.

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Highly adaptable, their mounds can be found nearly everywhere.

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In parks and playgrounds, in fields and vacant city lots, along sidewalks and roadsides, around houses, on lawns, near schools and hospitals, even in the middle of cities.

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The main shopping street of Gulfport, Mississippi is completely undermined with thousands of fire ant tunnels.

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The ants have no problem finding food and thriving.

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The red fire ant is a relative newcomer to this country.

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They arrived in Mobile, Alabama sometime between 1933 and 1945.

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A few ants were probably hidden in the cargo of a freighter from their native Brazil.

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They jumped ship and quickly multiplied.

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By the early 1950s, farmers started to complain.

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The fire ant had begun to interfere with their livelihood.

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The ants' hard earth mounds clogged equipment and bent cutting blades.

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No longer just a bothersome pest, the fire ant was becoming a major nuisance.

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Complaints about the fire ant mounted quickly.

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Fire ants invaded bails of hay, rendering them useless as feed for animals.

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Field workers, whose jobs required them to spend long hours near fire ant mounds, were frequently attacked and painfully stung.

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Young farm animals were sometimes killed when they strayed into ant-infested pastures.

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A chemical war against the fire ant was launched.

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It began on a small scale and then escalated.

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Cyanide, Chlordane, Dildren, Heptachlor, Keepholm,

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virtually every insecticide known to man was used against the fire ant.

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Yet the number of ants only increased. They continued to spread.

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In 1962, a newly discovered insecticide called Myrex offered new hope for the war against the ants.

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Large areas of land were covered with small pellets of bait containing the insecticide.

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Where other chemicals had failed, this one seemed to control the ants.

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A fleet of vintage B-17 bombers was converted to drop insecticide.

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Their single mission? To destroy the fire ant.

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The campaign has been called the Vietnam of Entomology.

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It lasted for years, covered vast areas of land and cost millions of dollars.

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When it was over, there were more fire ants than before.

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The fire ants have continued to multiply and spread,

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and scientists are searching frantically for a new weapon against them.

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At the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Fire Ant Control Lab,

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nearly 4,000 new insecticides have been carefully tested.

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So far, none has proved both safe and effective.

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A winged fire ant queen, ready for mating.

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The major problem in controlling the spread of fire ants lies in the lack of a single ant.

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The major problem in controlling the spread of fire ants lies in their method of reproduction.

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Mating takes place not on the ground, but high in the air.

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Unfertilized winged queens are produced in large numbers by every colony.

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At mating time, usually in the spring, they leave the colony for a nuptial flight.

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A hovering cloud of winged male ants waits in the sky high above them.

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The queens fly up to the males to be inseminated.

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After their aerial rendezvous, the fertile queens fly back to the ground.

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Each is programmed by nature to establish a new colony wherever she lands.

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The queen's new colony may be located hundreds of yards or even miles from her original mound.

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Within a month, a small underground colony has emerged around the queen.

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The first generation of workers tends to developing larvae with care, keeping them warm and alive.

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The queen herself receives constant attention.

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A group of specialized workers does nothing but groom and feed her.

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The only way the workers can identify her is by the chemical odor or pheromone which she exudes.

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For the rest of her life, the queen will do nothing but lay eggs, millions of them.

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Each developing egg is carefully guarded and cared for.

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Quickly, the emerging colony will multiply in size.

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Scientists have isolated the queen pheromone and are attempting to use it in their struggle to control the fire ant.

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When the pheromone is spread on a stick, workers mistake it for the queen.

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They react automatically and carry it into the colony.

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The pheromone odor may someday serve as a way to deliver new insecticides into the core of a fire ant mound.

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At present, however, it is only an experiment which holds some promise for the future.

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Parasitic mites sometimes infest the bodies of fire ants.

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This fact has led scientists to search for other organisms that could control the ant population.

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So far, none has been found.

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Viewed through an electron microscope, the tiny fire ant takes on grotesque form.

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Nearly half of its head area is taken up by two sharp mandibles, each with three points to tear and bite.

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The fire ant's real wallop, however, comes from its venomous stinger, not its bite.

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Using a tiny syringe, Agriculture Department scientist Dr. Mike Glancy carefully milks venom from a dissected fire ant.

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The venom is unique in the animal world. It is a burning alkaloid chemical similar to the substances found in poisonous plants.

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The fire ant's venom makes an accidental sting a very painful experience.

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The ant first bites the skin with its mandibles, then it injects poison with the stinger.

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The result is a painful pustule which lasts several days.

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Dogs that play in fire ant areas are highly vulnerable. This puppy was savagely attacked.

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Farm animals grazing in infested pastures frequently receive numerous painful stings.

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This woman fell on a fire ant mound and was badly stung.

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In 1974, foraging fire ants entered the window of a convalescent home and stung this woman hundreds of times. She barely survived.

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As the fire ant has spread, it has taken a human toll.

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People have died from complications such as gangrene which developed from fire ant stings.

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The elderly, the allergic and people with circulatory problems are especially vulnerable to the venom.

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The list of victims will undoubtedly grow. The fire ant is multiplying and spreading at an incredible rate.

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Today, fire ants are sweeping westward and also to the north.

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They are moving through Texas and are expected eventually to reach California.

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If a fertilized queen should land aboard a cross-country truck or stow away in someone's camping gear, they could quickly infest fast new areas.

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Scientists have projected that the region as far northwest as Seattle, Washington is destined to be infested by fire ants.

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In the northeast, even New York City may someday be plagued by the ant.

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Wherever fire ants spread, they will leave their mark on those unlucky enough to encounter them.

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The scientific name of the fire ant is Solenoxis Invicta. It means the unconquered ant.

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The struggle between man and insects is as old as man himself.

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We have rarely, if ever, gained the advantage.

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In the short time that fire ants have inhabited the United States, they have undergone evolutionary changes.

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They have quickly adapted themselves to better survive and exploit their environment.

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Special colonies have been found containing not one, but as many as 20,000 queens.

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It was recently discovered that some fire ants have adapted their bodies to store food for better survival in cold temperatures.

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60 years ago, an entomologist wrote,

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Since the world began, we have never exterminated, we probably shall never exterminate as much as one single insect species.

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If there ever was an example of an insect we cannot destroy, the fire ant is it.

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Coming up next, 20th century with Mike Wallace investigates the unsettling cases of murderers Charles Manson and John Wayne Gacy.

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Then weapons at war takes a look at anti-aircraft cannon, rockets and radar defense systems.

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And log on at veterans.com, a new website brought to you by the History Channel.

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Veterans.com, a place where veterans, their families and others can connect, share stories and pass on the legacies of all American veterans.