The most interesting thing I’ve ever seen was an argument between ants. As a student I worked on a project to use California grey ants for pest control in peach orchards ‘Formica aerata’ (it’s very effective). This involved capturing wild colonies (digging them up) and breeding them in captivity. To move the colony from the box of dug up dirt to the enclosure, I coated the inside of the box with liquid Teflon (future cancer risk?) and slowly flooded the box, the only way out was a bridge to the new enclosure. Over the next ten hours the ants would compete, some moving eggs and larvae to the new enclosure, some moving them back to the queen. Eventually, when the rising flood had converted enough of the workers to the cause of the revolution, they will make an attempt to move the queen, which she and and a coiterie of anti-diluvianists would resist. The bridge to new enclosure would be a solid mass of writhing black (like Venom from Spider-Man). The queen, noticeably larger than the workers would repeat an escape and climb back over the living bridge to the steadily submerging dirt pile again and again, until eventually overwhelmed she was dragged by the masses to the new home, flailing and struggling all the way.
(Imagining "anti-diluvianist" ants cracked me up, especially because of the double pun.)
Does that mean the ants were unable to communicate the upcoming danger to each other and had to rely on first-hand observation? That's surprising given how much they communicate otherwise.
I don’t know, but the way I thought about it is that I imagined each ant was quite simple, and the fight was a distributed mind weighing the sum of the fractions of reality perceived by each individual
I saw a video quite a few years ago where they dump some ants on a platform, with a string leading to another platform with an area that (apparently) seemed like a decent home. (the below is according to my fallible memories)
One ant wandered to the good area and checked it all out. She then marched back to the others, and bodily lifted another and took her to the good area. They both inspected the area and each repeated the trek to pull in another ant. This continued until "enough" ants were in the new area and they shifted into "build a nest" mode.
It felt very oversimplified for TV viewers, but nonetheless was fascinating - a breakdown of just HOW some simple models can lead to more complex emergent behavior. I just tried to find this video without success (on the bright side, there are a ton of OTHER fascinating ant videos out there)
yes, and that’s basically the model of emergent behavior in many (all?) complex systems, such as human societies. the population exhibits properties that only some of the members exhibit, and some members diametrically oppose.
Could be a security mechanism. Moving a queen would be risky. A large number of ants would be necessary to move the queen if she always resisted, which means a very small chance of false positives or a malicious mis-signal.
Scouts attempt to synchronize a march with an obstinent queen who doesn't easily sign-off on the march. The only way they succeed is to do the enormous work required to carry the queen over to the point of synchronization.
This way rogue ants can't destroy the colony without having 51% consensus on where to move the queen.
This is from Fight Club; which is notable because the author was trying to convey that having no responsibilities or possessions was the path to true enlightenment.
This is of course a fallacy as "Joe" the protagonist winds up shooting himself and ends up in a mental hospital. We aren't supposed to sympathise with that notion.
This is fascinating. Are there any cases where the queen was encouraging the move? Or do they always opt to stick with the flooding home until the end? I guess what I'm asking is if it's dependent on the specimen or an instinct.
I heard the process of making decision of bee or ant colony resembles the one in mammal brain cells.
Thus, it would have been a visualization of dilemma.
