Not necessarily: The article states that ants are deliberately maintaining aphid herds, possibly for many seasons, by carefully selecting for a ratio of red and

Not necessarily: The article states that ants are deliberately maintaining aphid herds, possibly for many seasons, by carefully selecting for a ratio of red and green insects. The wording of that statement implies intent and intention on the part of the ants. Except for the fact that we don't what the ants are doing at all. It may simply be (and likely more likely be) that over many, many generations of ants, evolution, a purely random, intentionless process, has resulted in ants with a preference for the 2-1 green-to-red ratio. The ants aren't selecting or managing or farming. They are pruning the herd to match the distribution encoded in ant DNA, an encoding arrived at over many, many generations, but simple random mutations conveying slight survival benefits.