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Intelligent Ants?; What would life have been like for them?
Topic Started: Mar 29 2010, 03:56 PM (2,567 Views)
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Ants have sometimes been called "the perfect society". In many ways, they behave like humans; they "domesticate" other bugs, they use problem-solving and teamwork to overcome obstacles, they wage war, they have complex systems of organization, and they have huge complexes where they all live. However, most ants (and most eusocial insects, for that matter) rely on instinct rather than intellect to solve their problems and keep their society afloat.

So what if, in some small part of the world (presumably, any part of the world), ants developed a sense of knowldge, emotion, and willpower to match our own? Would their civilization be any different? Would they conquer their brothers and claim the world as their own?
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Pando
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Well, if ants do develop sapience then lets hope they're not driver ants. Isn't it interesting how Magnobestia changed his name to Dorylus, which is the genus name of Driver Ants? I wonder if there is a connection...

I didn't think about ants using their mandibles. Maybe they could also use their antennas.

It's also possible that the worker ants get eliminated and the queens (there are many queens, and they aren't so big) are the females and rule the female-dominated society of independent thinking ants. And they compete with the primitive ants that have a collective intelligence and a caste system the same as today's ants.

If my idea is possible, then they will probably still stay in hills. After all, for humans each city is like an ant hill, with the CEO's and government officials like the queens and every other adult like the workers.
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I don't see why everyone always thinks that ants work for the queen, she just produces the new ants.

although i don't like the idea of the anthill being a superorganism, but I suppose it's close enough to be one, i have to agree that that's the thing that will be getting sapience rather than the individual ants themselves.

as for manipulators their mandibles are perfectly fine, using their antennae would be a terrible move due to how sensitive and important they are.
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Ahh, ants, one of the best creatures IMO. If they devloped willpower however, they may stop working for the queen. However, tempered by the fact that they are intelligent, they may realise that without subservience to the queen, the society will die. Therefore, the hive may retain integrity and promptly develop extraordinary hunting strategies specific to each prey item, as well as probably defeating ant allcomers.


Actually the queen is just another cog in the machine. The behavior of the hive is mainly orchestrated through touching antennae and checking the frequency with which they encounter ants doing various jobs. As the workers and soldiers don't lay eggs feeding and protecting the queen is their form of reproduction. They all have the same genome (aside from that little chromosome number imbalance,) so children from the queen have the same value as their own children would have in raw genetic terms.

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Pandorasaurus, while I don't think they need to develop centaurism (that's a little too anthropomorphic, and besides, they've got perfectly fine mandibles), though you do bring up a point about the fragility of such a civilization. Who knows? Maybe there was an intelligent bunch of ants that developed (maybe even several times over), and we killed them off without knowledge of it.


No, the molecular limits are too intense. While our brains only use the energy equivalent of a light bulb this is still incredibly expensive in bio-energetic terms, though that is at least as much due to the cost of growing it in the first place.
Greater brain mass typically has no benefit aside from coordinating appendages or developing a specialized sense such as echolocation. Social and aquatic mammals have the biggest push for brain mass and even so that only pushes toward things like chimps and dolphins, neither of which have mastered fire or developed computers and such.

The likely culprit behind man's comparably enormous brain going as far as it has is sexual selection, which is also responsible for huge apparent wastes of energy like the peacock's tail. Male chimps don't take much of a role in parenting beyond conception but male humans frequently act as lifelong protector of their mate and offspring, to the degree that you could call it the default behavior.

But that raises the question of "protector from what?" With a spear and maybe a shield any trained human can kill the most dangerous of predators and with a group of such armed humans it is possible to wipe out such predators in a region altogether over time. No, we surpass those beasts on too wide a scale and do so best as a group instead of on an individual basis.

Which leaves the real culprit exposed: humans. The only thing worse than someone who can use so many weapons as we do is someone smart enough to know that you could become a greater threat than they already are. (ok, not the most elegant way of putting it I'll admit.)
And thus is born not just a force to drive up to a particular level of intelligence but one that constantly pit our species against smarter adversaries because triumph for us meant spreading those genes throughout the population that was also our enemy.

And so if you have followed along thus far you should have a much better tool set for contriving a situation that would dive ants toward intellect.

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No no. Intelligent SIAFU ants. They already kill humans. What would it be like if they got smarter?

If they got smarter that could include empathy for other sentient creatures as well the heavy realization that we seek revenge upon unintelligent creatures often enough but only truly show the depth of our wrath against those who can comprehend what they have done to us.

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The point is, that it's not the ant that needs to become sapient. It's the superorganism as a whole. Just as each brain cell within our body is nonsapient (not even sentient) by itself, all together form the brain, which is more than the sum of its parts.

Note that ants will never evolve independent thought on the individual level, because the workers don't need to think about themself. Humans are given their own personality per person, because each human carries its own genetic code and thus wants its DNA passed down to the next generation. Ants only work for the queen (and for the drones I guess). Independant thought, that means thought that serves the individual ant trather than the colony is counterproductive. Independent thinking ants would be like cancer cells.

Ants could evolve a new caste, one whose sole task is to coordinate the workers and soldiers by pheromones. Such a caste could create similar patters as brain cells, several caste individuals would be able to remember stuff. If you have thousands of those "thinker" ants they could probably solve relatively complicated problems.

The question is not if ants can reach sapience, but if the anthill can. Unfortunately anthills* are on the same evolutionary level of superorganisms as flatworms or similarly primitive invertebrates of organisms.

*Since the anthill is the true organism, we should probably start refering to colony-building ants as anthills. We don't say "human cells" to humans either, do we.

Take it further: the nest, as in the tunnels and rooms, itself could become the thinking structure with the ants laying down scent-logic along the floors and rewriting the "program" as they walked along it.

You'd probably want them making some kind of paste to smooth out the tunnels used for this but you could liken that to myelinated axons.

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I don't see why everyone always thinks that ants work for the queen, she just produces the new ants.

although i don't like the idea of the anthill being a superorganism, but I suppose it's close enough to be one, i have to agree that that's the thing that will be getting sapience rather than the individual ants themselves.

as for manipulators their mandibles are perfectly fine, using their antennae would be a terrible move due to how sensitive and important they are.
Because queen sort of also refers to a ruler, especially in the absence of a king.
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It's also possible that the worker ants get eliminated and the queens (there are many queens, and they aren't so big) are the females and rule the female-dominated society of independent thinking ants. And they compete with the primitive ants that have a collective intelligence and a caste system the same as today's ants.

They wouldn't do that. Queen ants killing off their valuable workers would be like an organism's genitalia killing off its limbs. They're far too weak to not keep their only connection to the outside world.

In a sentient ant society, though, they might become the equivalent of a pharoah; worshipped like a god on earth, though not really doing much in lieu of law.
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Pando
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Actually I meant that the worker females are killed off in the evolutionary process and all ants take the place of the workers, with queens ruling the society and males treated how they were in the 1600s.
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Nah. You don't have to be equal to become intelligent. In fact, them having a hive mind may speed up any development into sentience.
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I didn't say that they wouldn't live in a hive, they would live in a hive and all would work to supply the hive. But no technology or fire for intelligent ants.
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But then they'd be the same ants they are now. To become intelligent like us, all they'll need are:
*a complex form of communication (most likely pheromones)
*a sense of self in all members (at least, a little more than animals usually do)
*the need to make tools and manipulate the environment
*a lack of satisfaction for the current way of life (advancement)

Put it all together, and you've got your sophont.
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SIngemeister
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Surely termites, what with their more advanced systems of building (compare a termite nest, with water supplies and air con to an ant nest, which is a load of clever chambers and tunnels) have a better chance.

Or maybe both could happen. Nomadic Ants and Castle-Building Termites...
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Or bees, with their storage of food and their communicative dances?
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*a sense of self in all members (at least, a little more than animals usually do)
And this is where your logic fails.

A sense of self implies the sense of self-preservation and that is disadvantageous to the hive as a whole and thus wouldn't survive natural selection.

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I don't see why everyone always thinks that ants work for the queen, she just produces the new ants.

Yeah, she is pretty much just the genitalia of the anthill, most definately not the brain. (Though there seems to be no difference for some people...) The queen uses all her resources to produce offspring. She can't afford a bigger brain as that would reduce the number of larvae the queen could produce.

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although i don't like the idea of the anthill being a superorganism

Since when has nature ever cared about what humans like? =P

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Take it further: the nest, as in the tunnels and rooms, itself could become the thinking structure with the ants laying down scent-logic along the floors and rewriting the "program" as they walked along it.

Definately, especially since they already do it, known as "ant trail". Taking this concept a little bit further isn't that farfetched.
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A sense of self implies the sense of self-preservation and that is disadvantageous to the hive as a whole and thus wouldn't survive natural selection.

It could if this sense of self allowed the workers to be autonomous, and not have to travel in groups. This way, one worker could be out in the open, and still be able to, say, subdue large quantities of food.

They'd only be aware that each of them is unique; otherwise, they're inherently Communist.
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SIngemeister
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I think we can evolve this further into Intelligent insects as a whole. Termites creating defences against bees and wasps. Maybe flying ones that explode like Globotermes, or just more nastutes.
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A whole world of intelligent eusocials? ...strangely compelling. Like...a tiny Lord of the Rings...or something of that sort. :D
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A sense of self implies the sense of self-preservation and that is disadvantageous to the hive as a whole and thus wouldn't survive natural selection.

It could if this sense of self allowed the workers to be autonomous, and not have to travel in groups. This way, one worker could be out in the open, and still be able to, say, subdue large quantities of food.
They already do that: One ant finds food. That ant goes back to the colony leaving behind a scent trail. Other ants follow that trail, strengthening the scent. Over time the whole hive can feed on the food the ant found. If the ant had to bring each piece of edible material by itself, it would take way too loong and also the ant will eventually lose its own scent trail, as no other ant will strengthen it. Ants already are as autonomous as they need to be. Any more autonomity would break up the hive or at least hinder its ability to survive.


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They'd only be aware that each of them is unique

But, they truly aren't. Each single worker and soldier is basically just a clone of the queen. It has the exact same set of DNA. The sense of self evolved to help the individual survive and pass down its own genes to the next generation. Ant workers and soldiers don't need to do that. It doesn't matter for themselves if they die or not. It only matters if the hive is in danger and in this case it would irrational to not sacrifice itself for the colony, for its own DNA. Doing so would be the same as if your hand would just detach from your body, while you are being in great danger. Your hand can't survive on its own. It can't reproduce and it can't even eat. Ants don't need a sense of themself, they only need a sense for the hive, because that is all what they truly are.
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