6 ms·
Collections of ants are both solid-like and liquid-like
- viach 11y agoThe first photo looks not very humane as for me, don't know why...
- tgb 11y agoUnfair to ants.
- venery 11y agoI believe the proper term is an Army of Ants ;)
- samstave 11y agoIn a sort of similar notion, this is a really interesting read on how large crowds of humans behave like a liquid: https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3pcvfb/saudi_arabia_hajj_disaster_death_toll_at_least/cw5vxtm?context=3 https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3pcvfb/saudi_arab...
- jahewson 11y agoPerhaps we should put them in a rheometer too?
- Tinyyy 11y agoThat post was insightful. Thanks for sharing.
- Natanael_L 11y agoAlmost anything will behave like a liquid with enough momentum/energy distributed throughout the system.
- dsfsdfd 11y agoThis is trivial. It's also borderline inhumane.
- Filligree 11y agoThey're ants. I get where you're coming from, but they're ants. Your cellphone is smarter.
- arel 11y agoI don't disagree but it always makes me wonder if aliens are out there tearing a few of us limb from limb and saying... they're only humans.
- knieveltech 11y agoTo confirm, you literally spend time wondering if humans are being torn limb from limb by alien species?
- brink 11y agoWhoa, this is a pressing situation, here.
- dsfsdfd 11y agoHow do you know? I know a lot about brains, I like brains and I am not certain that I can quantify the degree of suffering likely to be felt by an ant.
- tehchromic 11y ago"your cellphone is smarter" -- I'd like to disagree without being disagreeable! I'd say ants are at least an order of magnitude smarter than a cell phone. Ants are less intelligible to humans maybe, as their intelligence is not of service to us, but they are most definitely more useful to us than phones as well.
- Sven7 11y agoThe Ant has possibly the largest brain/body mass ratio in the entire animal kingdom. Which is possibly why there are 10 million more ants per human on the planet. That's a smart brain in my book. Having said that I am all for mass ant sacrifice to figure out the magic.
- fumar 11y agoIf you find ants interesting, I recommend The Superorganism. It is an in depth a look at ants, bees, and termites through social lens. Link: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3426920-the-superorganism http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3426920-the-superorganism
- s_kilk 11y ago"Imagine the window were made of ants..." Top work.
- tehchromic 11y agoI have been saying the same thing about bees for years: they're a semi-solid
- grimmdude 11y agoI'd love to have a window made out of ants.
- civilian 11y agoAs someone with a biology background, it's really funny when physicists dip their toes into studying life. It's like: "hmmm, what massive oversimplification can we make!" They're intelligent agents that can choose whether or not to hold onto their neighbors, so of course they are both solid-like and liquid like. I'm kind of expecting the next headline to be: "wood can be both solid-like and liquid-like, depending on how much we pulp it."
- jonsterling 11y agosomebody had to say it
- gaius 11y agoThis seems to be incredibly cruel. Poor ants.