7 replies to this topic

[BugFinder]

So I've been watching my ants alot today, which I suspect is pretty common to all brand new ant keepers, and although they are considered to be one of the most organized societies on the planet, and to have one of the most complex social structures of any creature on earth, alot of what they do seems to me to be really random...  Like picking up a larva, and moving it from here to there, just to return it a few moments later to it's original location, and frequently repeating that action, over and over.

 

Am I just not understanding what I'm seeing, or are they not as intelligent as some people tend to imply?

[kellakk]

I don't think individual ants are that intelligent. What they  can and do accomplish as a group is what's so amazing.

[dspdrew]

Yup. What kellakk said. They are smart as a colony, not individually. Sometimes you have to just come back later and see where all the larvae are rather than where each ant moves each one in the process.

[prettycode]

...and to have one of the most complex social structures of any creature on earth...

I don't think anyone thinks that.

 

Like has been said, individual ants are pretty stupid. Their social structure is extremely simple, as well. It's the emergent behavior that is fascinating. This is a whole topic of science: "complexity" and "emergence" theory. It pertains to agents of a system, operating under simple rules, producing complex behaviors that only arise given interactions and cooperation of said agents.

[prettycode]

In other words, the fascinating thing about ants, at least for me, and from an emergence perspective, is: given just how stupid and arbitrary individual ants are, how is it possible that they accomplish such amazing things together? How is the hive mind so smart when the individuals' minds are so dull? By what dynamics does the super-organism become greater than the individual?

 

You see this everywhere in nature. Science has been so reductionist up until now. We want to dissect everything into its individual parts, to try to deduce how the system works. But that's missing the forest for the trees. Complexity, emergence, and chaos theory address this from the other end: how might we understand nature by examining it holistically?

 

Take, for example, the leap from single-celled organism to multicellular organisms: what governing principles of nature are responsible for that? Where else are they present in nature? How do they manifest?

 

http://www.scienceda...41106113334.htm

 

There was an NPR program I heard a while back where, at a town fair, attendees were asked to guess the weight of a bull. Closest person won a prize. Over a thousand guesses were made. No one guessed the right amount him or herself, but when a researcher got ahold of the data and averaged everyone's guess, the average was literally the exact weight of the bull. How that's possible is a fascinating question to think about.

Edited by prettycode, December 22 2014 - 7:14 AM.

[dermy]

I've found some of my colonies tend to have "Brain Dead" workers sometimes, maybe that's what that worker was haha.

[Crystals]

I find the larger the colony the more interesting it gets.  Roles become more obvious, as well as a few ants that seem to have missed the role-playing memo.

I see all sorts of odd behaviors in colonies under 50 workers.

[DesertAntz]

When I first started observing my colonies they would obviously get startled. I saw a worker drag brood from the main pile and move it away, only for the queen to move it back to the pile. They did this back and forth for about 5 minutes. It was quite comical. 

 

Like crystal said, once a colony reaches a certain population, they'll probably be more effective as a colony and appear less 'dumb'.