28 replies to this topic

[Reacker]

There's some kind of trick to doing this fairly reliable with army ants, but I don't remember what it was. Something to do with them not coping well with the combination of flat surfaces and circular obstacles (which in nature they would never encounter, hence no programming to deal with it). I think the idea was that you put a can of soda in the middle of their marching mass while they're moving and they start pathing around the circle until the entire colony is moving in a circle of death. Then you can pull the can and they just follow each other around and around. 

 

At least I think that's how it goes. i haven't read the source material for this in ages. 

[biophilia]

Circle is cool thank you...I really do like that.  Never seen it.

As to Phorid flies.. have you seen "Braindead" the TV series?  based on that!

 

to XZero38... sting and bite... "sting?" unless you feel the sting, what's the point?  It works because ...robots sting?

[biophilia]

Thank you all.

You all are very enlightening, I appreciate the explanations.

They do make sense to me.

I believe O.E.Wilson said the same as you all were explaining (e.g. little robots).

I'll leave it now.

Cheers

[Reacker]

Stings and acid can do different things to different animals. Harvester ants have venom that is specifically designed to be painful and harmful to mammals. I believe the purpose of this was to deal with the small rodents that try to raid their nests of seeds. 

 

But beyond being targeted to mammals this sting can also be lethal to other invertebrates. You don't need to feel pain from an injury or attack of some kind in order to be injured or killed by that attack. 

 

There is a rare disorder than some people have where they are entirely incapable of feeling pain of any kind. You could break their ribs and they wouldn't be able to feel it. Does this mean that because they can't feel the injury, being physically damaged is harmless to them? Not at all. In fact, these people actually have a significantly higher risk of dying than normal people because they're unable to detect injuries that they get unless they happen to be paying attention to the affected area as it happens. They also tend not to have the unconscious injury avoidance techniques that most people develop as children because they never really feel the consequences of being injured except abstractly. 

 

You are thinking of injury and injured-behavior as being attached exclusively to pain because that's what humans and other vertebrates associate with being injured, but the actual problem with being injured is that injuries can kill you. You don't need a "brain" complicated enough to feel pain in order to try to avoid damaging environmental factors, and you certainly don't need a brain to die of sufficiently damaging environmental factors. See Sea Sponges and bacteria for this. 

[Goldsystem]

I remember watching a documentary in which some leaf cutter ants were harvesting so much grass that the farmers decided to burn the fields that they were in, the ants kept on marching like nothing was happening and burned to death. But even so you should still treat ants with respect, but if they are invading your house then you can do what you feel you need to do to get rid of them.

[anttics]

the most humane way to kill an insect is to throw them on boiling water. they die in less than a second. it also kills any mites. I once cut a meal worm in half while still alive. left it with the ants. 1 hour later it was still moving around as docents of ants were biting him. i kill it after I saw that. after that I pre kill all feeder insects.

[T.C.]

the most humane way to kill an insect is to throw them on boiling water. they die in less than a second. it also kills any mites. I once cut a meal worm in half while still alive. left it with the ants. 1 hour later it was still moving around as docents of ants were biting him. i kill it after I saw that. after that I pre kill all feeder insects.

That's what I do. Boil water or freeze them.

[nurbs]

You all make me feel like crap. I take tweezers to live crickets and squish their head with it. Then rip off their legs. Then feed them to the ants. They're still twitching, too. 

[Serafine]

You see "panic and fear", is this the erratic movements you are referring to? This can be seen in many circumstances, of ants being attacked. What I see here is a normal response to being attacked. No panic, or fear, just the natural response to the colony being attacked. The same responses can be seen when ants attack other colonies, or when dealing with intruders.

 

Feelings are an emotional state or reaction. Insects lack the neurological structures that translate a negative stimulus into an emotional experience.

Actually there's a study with bumblebees that proves that insects CAN in fact have basic feelings like a positive expectation bias.

Those are not the complex emotions we have but it is highly likely that insects are capable of experiencing basic feelings like excitement or some sort of fear.

 

I do not think that ants feel pain the same way we do though - not because I think it is impossible for insects to feel pain but because it doesn't make sense for ants (and other eusocial insects) specifically. An individual ant is just a tiny wheel in a much larger machinery (or superorganism) and the only purpose of it's life is to work for the wellfare of it's colony being it to harvest food in dangerous environments or defending the colony with it's very life - the ability to feel incapacitating amounts of pain would just negatively impact it's overall performance.

Edited by Serafine, January 6 2018 - 3:55 AM.