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Ant Yogurt and Chocolate Science

1:06:22 recording · AUTO · 4 speakers

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Brief overview

Two food-microbiology papers show ants can start yogurt and nine defined microbes can ferment fine chocolate.

  1. Four ants can start a yogurt fermentationThe ant supplies formic acid, proteases and lactic and acetic acid bacteria, with the sourdough microbe Fructilactobacillus sanfranciscensis dominant.
  2. Nine microbes reproduce fine chocolate flavourFive bacteria and four fungi together gave a tasting panel the aroma and flavour notes of fine chocolate; leave one out and it fails.
  3. Traditional fermentations hide real microbial ecologyEthno-microbiology, from Bulgarian ant mounds to Sardinian Casu Marzu and wasp-borne wine yeasts, keeps turning up microbes we never credited.
Executive Summary AI
  • On a Halloween-themed food episode of This Week in Microbiology, Michael Schmidt presents an open-access iScience paper by Veronica Senat, Veronica Ramos-Villana, Diego Prado-Vasquez and colleagues, including two Michelin-starred chefs, on making yogurt with the ant holobiont.3:53
  • The team traced an overlooked practice in Turkey and Bulgaria of adding ants, ant larvae or ant eggs to milk, and used four Formica ruffa and Formica polycenta ants from a colony pointed out by the community, with the milk warmed in the ant mound.6:35
  • At the Alchemist in Copenhagen, about a thousand dollars a person for 50 courses, the chefs built three dishes from it: an ant-witch ice cream sandwich served at negative 11 degrees C, a goat mascarpone likened to mature pecorino, and a milk wash cocktail curdled with dehydrated ants.11:58
  • The authors caution against casual imitation: live ants can carry a parasite, which they countered with a 100 micron pore size filter and freezing, and ants are not among the four insects authorized as food in the EU under the novel food rule covering anything not consumed there before 1997.15:54
  • Mark Martin then covers a Nature Microbiology paper from September 2025 in which metagenomics identified a nine-member synthetic community, five bacteria and four fungi, that reproduced fine-flavour cocoa fermentation, and dropping any single strain out broke it.41:37
Key Quote
“But you have to wonder what dude thought, let me throw this ant into milk and see what happens, right?”
— Vincent Racaniello6:47
Key Quote
“So the ant itself contributes formic acid as well as very potent proteases to the mix, helping with the initial acidification and the coagulation of the milk.”
— Michael Schmidt7:38
Key Quote
“But all in all, this paper is a beautiful convergence of culture and microbiology showing us that when it comes to fermentation, nature, and history, the most exciting starters might just be found in an ant mound.”
— Michael Schmidt20:56