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Intelligent Ants?; What would life have been like for them?
Topic Started: Mar 29 2010, 03:56 PM (2,566 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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One word, my friend: twins. Twins, for all intents and purposes, share the same genes. They, however, are totally different.

But I digress. What I mean is, that the ant could look into a drop of water, see its reflection, and think "I should straighten that feeler" instead of "that ant needs to straighten her feeler".
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Zorku
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Mar 30 2010, 03:31 PM
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.
I think it would be plausible to have the communication still take place through touching antennae (funiculus from now on.) With just a few scents emitted independently at each segment you could get vocabularies on par with humans easily (you'd need thirteen scents and three active segments to get to 2000 words, and if each antennae were independent you could get as many words from just three scents.)

Group speaking would be an issue but if they had high enough accuracy that the telephone game wouldn't be an issue they could just relay the message until there were a small group of them repeating it over and over to new ants.
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Interesting. I visualized that the scent glands would sprinkle "perfume" to allow communication, since mostly tactile communication would be a little clumsy (though they might do that too). Since it'd sit in the air, those within smelling difference could understand what the ant is trying to say. A downside would be that a whole speech could be blown away by the wind.
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Flisch
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One word, my friend: twins. Twins, for all intents and purposes, share the same genes. They, however, are totally different.

Too bad for your argument, that ant workers and soldiers are infertile and thus HAVE to rely on the hive to produce offspring of their own genes.
Twins can pretty much have as many children as they want, each of them. Plus identical twins (you see, there are two kinds of twins...) are more an anomaly than a survival strategy for humans. Infact, producing identical twins is less efficient than producing twins with two different sets of genes, as that reduces the diversity of DNA within the genepool.

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But I digress. What I mean is, that the ant could look into a drop of water, see its reflection, and think "I should straighten that feeler" instead of "that ant needs to straighten her feeler".

An ant has no need to be pretty, because it never has to search for a mate and thus never has to look attractive.
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Flisch, you know what I mean. I don't mean the need to look pretty; I mean the ability to recognize oneself in a mirror, like we humans and chimpanzees are able to do. That's just 1 part of it, however crucial it is.
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Flisch
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And you still haven't provided one single argument why it would be advantageous to the species if they did.

If it doesn't help the hive, or rather, the species, it won't survive natural selection.

Funny that you actually mention the sense of self, because the anthill indeed does have a sense of self. It knows what's part of its own "body" and attacks other anthills, as they are not "itself".
Point for me I guess. Wooo! :-°
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Zorku
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One word, my friend: twins. Twins, for all intents and purposes, share the same genes. They, however, are totally different.

But I digress. What I mean is, that the ant could look into a drop of water, see its reflection, and think "I should straighten that feeler" instead of "that ant needs to straighten her feeler".

Our twins have something that stops them from being born identical though- some of the hormones we produce for our own bodies can leak through placenta so if you've got twins next to each other and facing forward one will get a higher dose of, say, testosterone on the right while the other would get a higher dose on the left.

Plus human siblings intentionally seek out ways to differentiate themselves from their siblings while growing up. I'm pretty sure my sister developed arachnaphobia because I was into touching the non-dangerous creepy crawlies for whatever reason little boys end up wanting to do that. Earlier that that my parents have vivid memories of how quickly I got out of diapers when I saw a new sibling in them.

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Interesting. I visualized that the scent glands would sprinkle "perfume" to allow communication, since mostly tactile communication would be a little clumsy (though they might do that too). Since it'd sit in the air, those within smelling difference could understand what the ant is trying to say. A downside would be that a whole speech could be blown away by the wind.
I've always thought that in a hive setting the air would get too loaded with scents so they'd end up having to start "yelling" after a few words. The termite ventilation option might help with that but if the funiculus could handle it you could combine the touch option along with laying scents down in a trail. The "whispering" approach would be faster up to a certain point where lining up and having a bunch of them walk over the message would be quicker. They would already have the chemicals for this so just making sure they produced/stored them in both body parts would be really easy genetics. Understanding the order of signals with the ways I've described it might be an issue but if they were going to do both adjustments could be made.

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One word, my friend: twins. Twins, for all intents and purposes, share the same genes. They, however, are totally different.

Too bad for your argument, that ant workers and soldiers are infertile and thus HAVE to rely on the hive to produce offspring of their own genes.
Twins can pretty much have as many children as they want, each of them. Plus identical twins (you see, there are two kinds of twins...) are more an anomaly than a survival strategy for humans. Infact, producing identical twins is less efficient than producing twins with two different sets of genes, as that reduces the diversity of DNA within the genepool.

Quote:
 
But I digress. What I mean is, that the ant could look into a drop of water, see its reflection, and think "I should straighten that feeler" instead of "that ant needs to straighten her feeler".

An ant has no need to be pretty, because it never has to search for a mate and thus never has to look attractive.

Red Queen hypothesis really only gives parents to produce offspring with different viral vulnerabilities than the parents, which does happen with identical twins.

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And you still haven't provided one single argument why it would be advantageous to the species if they did.

If it doesn't help the hive, or rather, the species, it won't survive natural selection.

Funny that you actually mention the sense of self, because the anthill indeed does have a sense of self. It knows what's part of its own "body" and attacks other anthills, as they are not "itself".
Point for me I guess. Wooo! :-°
I guess I'll join this fight.

A sense of self is useful because you are able to perceive something about how others view you. This kind of thinking would be very useful for ants in that it would be the foundation for understanding what another hive would do, especially in terms of when they would attack (have advantages) and when they wouldn't (vulnerable.) As we've seen many times throughout human history the conditions of battle can far outweigh numbers (I'm thinking Cao Cao's loss in a 200k vs 50k fight,) so being able to do this sort of thing would be very beneficial for hives that were not yet as large as neighbors and after a few generations it would be very beneficial to large hives for prevention of such outcomes.

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Well, here's the way I see it. Individuality (which goes hand-in-hand with the sense of the body as a discrete and separate entity from the others) can allow individual thought processes. Since these ants can problem-solve, individual thought processes means that each ant could come up with his or her own creative way to solve something they percieve to be a problem. The information would be relayed across the hive, allowing them to adopt this idea, thus better adapting to the conditions at hand. This would help to strengthen the colony as a whole, and would thus be a trait passed on.

A normal ant colony would die if caught out in the rain. A colony whose individuals have thought up methods of keeping water out of the spiracles (e.g. some sort of "coat" made of a leaf") can stay out when in a rainstorm. A normal ant colony would also perish when confronted with cold. In the intelligent colony, an ant could think of using some insulation on the tunnels to keep warm air inside the colony, particularly in winter. Also, the normal ant colony would have to be impossibly quick to recover from an attack by an ant-eating animal. One clever ant in the sentient colony could devise a form of defense against large animals, or perhaps develop strong weapons to deter it.
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sam999
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Mar 30 2010, 12:22 AM
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.
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Zorku
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Another one of those things I need to read...

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But with the use of intelligence: yeah, problem solving in a couple of physical attempts instead of a bunch of genetic attempts is very useful but you need intelligence to give you something more every step of the way or it will be over before it has begun.
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Pando
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I found this video on Youtube about an ant city. It was an abandoned one, and they had to fill it with 10 TONS of cement before they could begin excavation. For ant size it was the size of the Great Wall of China and had things like ducts that expelled CO2 and ducts that sucked in O2. Pretty amazing stuff.

Edited by Pando, Mar 31 2010, 09:16 PM.
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Very interesting find Pandorasaurus.

And I guess I'll join the debate too. On the side of plausibility. Flisch's side.



The reason we humans (and other mammals) have evolved a sense of self is that mammals, while social, are not eusocial (except the naked mole rats. Which, BTW, do not have a sense of self). Eusocial means you act for the good of the group, not for the individual.

Ants, being eusocial, do not focus on themselves and it would be dangerous for the anthill if they start focusing on themselves. If an ant realizes that "Hey, I'm my own individual", it may try to persuade other ants to that philosophy and try to mutiny the queen. Which, once the queen is killed, no more ant society.

Think of ant sociality in this way: you know those creatures from "All Tomorrows"? The GEd humans made up of blocks, each evolved for a specific task? That's just like an ant colony, only those GEd humans exhibit the phenomenon in a single bodied form. The queen can be made akin to the genetalia. The workers could be the hands. The entire anthill works together as a brain.

Now, you can't have the genetalia by itself. It can't gather food, so it won't survive. You can't have the hands by themselves. They can't reproduce, so they won't survive. The brain, however, can survive on its own, but it needs the genetalia to copy the brain and the hands to feed it.

A similar thing works with ants. The queen can't survive on it's own: it can't get its own food. The workers can't survive on their own: they need to reproduce. The ant society can't survive on its own: it has to have the workers to feed it and the queen to replenish it.

Now, a sense of self would be detrimental to an ant society. Or, in fact, to ANY eusocial society. However, a sense of group would be perfect. Basically, the ants would have (and in fact, do have) the ability to sense what is good for the group. That's why they go out of their way to protect the larvae. Why they go out of their way to find food. And why they go on the warpath so often. All to protect the anthill.

It's a hive mind basically. The ants can't think for themselves. Whether they are a queen or a worker, they just can't. However, they can think for the good of the group. Which is a lot better than thinking for yourself (if you're an ant that is).

Think of it like an office building. Say your boss comes up to you and says "I need you to go to Japan to seal this deal." You don't say "No, I don't feel like it. I hate plane travel." Instead, if you are a good worker, you say "Sure. Whatever's best for the company." If you think about YOUR individual needs, it will bring the whole infrastructure down. But if you think about the GROUP's needs, the infrastructure will remain standing for another day.
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Pando
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But there is still one question I need answers too, and that's how exactly DOES the hive mind work?

And maybe with intelligent ants there will be more castes, like possibly the thinkers are the more intelligent ants and make up the biggest proportion of the hive intelligence, maybe those could be the males. And there could also be specialized warriors charged with defending the different castes instead of the entire anthill.
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Again, there is no reason to "mutiny" the queen since she's definitely not running the show.

I can see individuality being useful to ants for scouting purposes. When in the hill sure thinking as a whole would be the best choice since it is the whole that must survive rather than the individual, but when an ant is on the hunt for resource or a pathway or just trying to get back to the hill thinking for itself becomes the most important thing. If it survives then the resulting find or survival results in a stronger hill. A single lost ant doesn't seem like much but losing several hundred individuals when most of those losses could have been avoided by individual sapience can be a push.

So a sense of individuality along with a sense of the superior needs of the whole could work, a healthy individual means a healthy hill.

If you kill the queen the anthill actually makes another queen if they have the resources (larva, food, and lots of workers)... unless I'm thinking of another critter...

Males don't need to play any role other than triggering the hill. Any other role would far more easily be filled by the already role filling sterile females. If you want to segregate males and females into caste systems then deal with termites. Defending the entire hill rather than the individual castes is much easier, it's basically defending any ant that is yours rather than "oh you're a tunneler, I only defend nursery workers, sorry".
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Zorku
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Wow, we've looped around to the start of the thread again already?

I'll just answer the one question: Worker ants touch their feelers with each other and count how often they meet workers doing a particular task. This is how they decide whether to go digging or foraging or anything else. Aside from that they lay down a trail that attracts the other ants to it for things like everyone heading over to haul back food that some scout found. They form an efficient 3 lane highway with traffic to the food because ants headed home turn more when they have to walk around an ant.

That's most of how the hive mind works. Fighting is fairly simple as well.
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