7 ms·

Ant Colonies Retain Memories That Outlast the Lifespans of Individuals

395 points by bangonkeyboard 8y ago

AndrewOMartin 8y ago
This is a lovely article, and I feel there's a lifetime of lessons to be learned from any colony behaviour. I've recently submitted a thesis on a swarm intelligence algorithm which exhibits some of these qualities, and the parallels between the two was a core component of the contribution. This effect, where something is globally stable, even though all the individuals that make it happen are unstable is sometimes described as "a forest whose contours remain the same, as the trees all change". Consider this algorithm for an ant colony foraging for a good source of food (this behaviour has also been observed in ants searching for a new nest site): for each ant in the swarm if the ant is unhappy run to a random ant if the random ant is happy follow it to its location if the random ant is unhappy select a location at random if the ant is happy the ant continues to search its current location for each ant in the swarm the ant searches a tiny of its location, at random if the ant finds food the ant becomes happy if the ant doesn't find food the ant becomes unhappy If you run this algorithm you will find a "clusters" of ants form, which is a number of ants who share the same foraging location. Importantly, and this is mathematically proven, the largest cluster will form in the location with the best probability for finding food. This algorithm works even when the locations change over time and, as in the article, even when the ants which found the location are replaced with ants who have simply followed other ants to get there. The aspect which captured my attention is that there are tiny changes to individual lines of the algorithm which implement diverse behaviours such as hill climbing, optimise for exploitation or exploration, and global optimisation. The algorithm is called Stochastic Diffusion Search and I'm in the process of polishing a Python library which implements it and its many variants for a Show HN :) The repo is here https://github.com/AndrewOwenMartin/sds https://github.com/AndrewOwenMartin/sds some info and an explanatory animation here http://www.aomartin.co.uk/sds-animation/ http://www.aomartin.co.uk/sds-animation/ and an beta version is already on PyPi here https://pypi.org/project/sds/ https://pypi.org/project/sds/. Contact me (email address on my profile) if you're interested in using this algorithm or contributing to the library, it needs snappy C implementations, and a better explanatory animation!
- newman8r 8y ago
  Could you model this as a cellular automaton? Kind of reminds me of that. Sounds cool.
  - AndrewOMartin 8y ago
    Each ant, or "agent", just needs to store its "activity" (whether its happy or unhappy) and its "hypothesis" (its current location). You don't even need to store the hypothesis of inactive agents, so it's pretty minimal as it is, it's not clear how you would make it a cellular automaton. I have some ideas, but what did you have in mind?
    - newman8r 8y ago
      Take a look at this visualization https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsHc91IhzdI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsHc91IhzdI There's a repo in the description. Might not be specifically relevant to your project though
- cgh 8y ago
  Seems as good a time as any to mention this excellent book: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ant-colony-optimization https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ant-colony-optimization Really interesting stuff. There is code online somewhere. It's possible ant colony optimisation is dated now, I don't really know, but it's still fascinating.
- blixt 8y ago
  These emergent behaviors from relatively simple rules fascinate me. Have you seen https://pixling.world https://pixling.world ? It’s basically a tool to build systems with rules for both a grid (environments) and agents on that grid (pixlings). It’s quite advanced - every agent can have a neural network that is mutated to choose what rules to run instead of you hard coding it, and agents can split which causes a slight mutation in the new agent (evolution).
- zachguo 8y ago
  It reminds me my old days playing with NetLogo. Multi-agent modeling and complex system.
amatecha 8y ago
I mean, I feel like the wording "retain memories" might imply a greater degree of consciousness/agency than what was actually observed. The "memory" appears to be some completely tangible phenomenon, as per their comparison of trees "retaining memory" in the form of a tree growing bark around where a branch broke off. "Ants use the rate at which they meet and smell other ants, or the chemicals deposited by other ants, to decide what to do next." , etc. That said, it's still pretty interesting, and I think we can make some comparisons about how humans share knowledge/experience and what kind of tangible markers we use as cues for our own behaviour.
- ergothus 8y ago
  I'm not sure if I'm countering your point or supporting it, but I think a better example than trees is to point out how human cultures bear (and arguably, exist as different entities because of) after effects of events beyond the lifespans of those impacted. Example: the American trend of "you must finish all the food on your plate" has long outlived its origins, and has been continued on not because people consciously choose to continue so much as they dont consciously choose to STOP passing it on. Any number of social events that are not universal (tipping, suburbs vs downtown as being prosperous, etc) can be examined this way, and our reasonable but unthinking reactions to events help define our cultures. If we arent being conscious of these choices, how is this memory any different than the ants?
- mLuby 8y ago
  The concept of memory isn't related to consciousness; after all, we talk about computers having memory all the time. Rather than say everything short of humans doesn't really "remember", I find it much more interesting to think how similar our concept of remembering (reinforced neural connections) is to phenomena we don't think of as alive like rivers or pheromone trails.
- Sharlin 8y ago
  Human memories are a tangible physical phenomenon as well.
- phs318u 8y ago
  I think the wrong comparison is being made - humans to ants. The memory in this case doesn't belong to the ant but to the colony, which could be considered an organism in its own right. Similar to how large companies have "memory" (and behaviour) that outlast the term of employment of individual employees.
menzoic 8y ago
culture
commandlinefan 8y ago
CRAB: It's too bad, Achilles, that you weren't here last week, when Dr. Anteater and Aunt Hillary were my house guests. I should have thought of having you over then. ACHILLES: Is Aunt Hillary your aunt, Mr. Crab? CRAB: Oh, no, she's not really anybody's aunt. ANTEATER: But the poor dear insists that everybody should call her that, even strangers. It's just one of her many endearing quirks. CRAB: Yes, Aunt Hillary is quite eccentric, but such a merry old soul. It's a shame I didn't have you over to meet her last week. ANTEATER: She's certainly one of the best-educated ant colonies I have ever had the good fortune to know. The two of us have spent many a long evening in conversation on the widest range of topics. ACHILLES: I thought anteaters were devourers of ants, not patrons of ant-intellectualism! ANTEATER: Well, of course the two are not mutually inconsistent. I am on the best of terms with ant colonies. It's just ants that I eat, not colonies-and that is good for both parties: me, and the colony. - Douglas Hofstatder, "Godel, Escher and Bach"
mindgam3 8y ago
Fascinating. First thing that comes to mind is Family Systems theory of psychology. The idea is the family unit itself is treated as an entity that is sick, rather than any single “identified patient.” I like it because it provides a useful model for understanding transmission of observable patterns like child abuse or other behavioral problems across generations. If ants can do it for certain types of behavior, it certainly seems plausible that “human colonies” aka “families” can as well.
WalterBright 8y ago
These algorithms are similar to the ones I developed for the computer strategy for the Empire game. They worked, but I was unable to get them good enough to reliably defeat a human player. The first strategy I tried was simply randomness. It was pretty ineffective. A rule based one was also ineffective, as it tended to get itself into a box. But I found that adding a dose of randomness to the rule based strategy worked well. Most computer strategies of the day cheated, or altered the rules to give an advantage to the AI. Empire didn't. I did have thoughts about creating an interface so people could provide their own AIs and then the various AIs could battle it out. classicempire.com There's been a lot of research on the Life game. But I bet Empire would be a much better research platform - the rules are simple, but the game play can get pretty complex. I had a lot of fun developing AI algorithms for it. I wish the ant algorithms were known at the time, I bet they'd help! (One of the reasons the simple rules worked so well was the pieces had a hammer-paper-scissors relationship to each other.)
- Rumudiez 8y ago
  The game Armored Core: Formula Front for the PSP has a core mechanic that let’s players “program” their fighting robots in a destructured way. IIRC it’s about adding abilities and maneuvers that the AI can learn to use in combination while battling other AIs. It has a full campaign using this mechanic. Battling Amiibos in the Super Smash Bros game for the Wii U could be compared to this in a way, too.
- swampthinker 8y ago
  Hey Walter, did Sid Meier ever consult you while developing the Civilization series? I recognized a lot of similarities between Civ and Classic Empire when I went back and played the older games in the series.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    No, he never acknowledged Empire.
    - c3534l 8y ago
totalperspectiv 8y ago
The book A Deepness in the Sky (https://www.amazon.com/Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought/dp/0812536355 https://www.amazon.com/Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought/dp/0812536...) goes really deep (no pun intended) on this idea! I highly recommend it as some really solid sci-fi. It was full of big new ideas I had never conceived of before and often found myself sitting down just to think.
- mLuby 8y ago
  Likewise the short story "Glacial" in Alastair Reynolds's Galactic North book explores this concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_North#"Glacial" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_North#"Glacial"
- wallstop 8y ago
  Likewise Children of Time (https://www.amazon.com/Children-Time-Adrian-Tchaikovsky/dp/1447273303/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1544657316&sr=1-1&keywords=children+of+time https://www.amazon.com/Children-Time-Adrian-Tchaikovsky/dp/1...), another piece of solid sci-fi that explores some ideas about the development of "intelligence".
colin_fraizer 8y ago
The state endures until the emergence of "woke" drones who dedicate their time to signaling their moral superiority by decrying the colonialist nature of other community members, agitating for universal free nectar for all, and arguing that number of chromosomes does NOT determine ploidy!
8bitsrule 8y ago
An interesting definition of 'memory' (and 'history') includes the 'physical record' that we can decipher. Anthropologists study 'memories' left behind by ancient cultures that created artifacts. And the Earth keeps 'memories' of extinct animals in fossils ... and of geological events in rocks and landforms. DNA and epigenetics keep a 'memory' of lessons learned. Darwin 'remembered' evolution by the study of species. There's a valuable lesson to be learned here ... what record will 'digitization' leave behind?
leowoo91 8y ago
Carpenter ants built a nest in my apple tv, it took me 3 days to clear them out. I hope they don't remember it.
widforss 8y ago
I just traversed the ant part of Wikipedia, and this is what I found. > Queen ants have one of the longest life-spans of any known insect – up to 30 years. > The fertile eggs become female worker ants and unfertilized eggs develop as males; if the fertilized eggs and pupae are well-nurtured, they potentially become queens. > males are "quickly converted to sexual missiles." > the queens often try to escape the males, allowing only the fastest and the fittest males to mate. Mating takes place during flight. > One queen usually mates with several males. The sperm is stored in a special organ, known as a spermatheca, in the queen's abdomen, and lasts throughout her lifetime. This can be as long as 20 years, during which time the sperm can be used to fertilize tens of millions of eggs. > The males have evolved for the single purpose of inseminating the queen.[3] During "the quick and violent mating," the male literally explodes his internal genitalia into the genital chamber of the queen and quickly dies. And, moving on to army ants. > A nest is constructed out of the living ant workers' own bodies to protect the queen and larvae, and is later deconstructed as the ants move on. > As many as 150,000 to 700,000 worker bodies cover and protect the queen, linking legs and bodies in a mass that measures a meter across. > In the morning, the bivouac dissolves into raiding columns that form a fan-shaped front. These raiding columns can travel up to 20 metres per hour with lead workers laying a chemical trail for other workers to follow. Smaller workers lead the column, while larger, formidable soldiers protect the flanks. > When the queens emerge, the workers in the colony will form two 'systems' or arms in opposite directions. These queens that are hatched will move down either the arms and only two queens will succeed, one for each branch. The remaining new queens will be left in the middle and are abandoned to die. > The whole colony of army ants can consume up to 500,000 prey animals each day, so can have a significant influence on the population, diversity, and behavior of their prey. [...] About five species hunt in higher trees, where they can attack birds and their eggs, although they focus on hunting other social insects along with their eggs and larvae.
- thenaturalist 8y ago
  Ants really do provide a peek into the diversity of evolution and often how little we know about the world around us. I buried the dream of becoming a myrmecologist myself, but there is so much fascinating stuff to share. Ants can dive [0] and swim [1], and in mangrove forests adapted to survive extended periods with low O2 during flooding [2]. Some species have established ritual fights to solve territorial conflict [3] and while they are known to be fiercely territorial, there are species who defy the rule and fuse nests after intense fighting [4], or form mega colonies without hostility to strangers across globes - one of these mega colonies being located along the coast of California [5]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camponotus_schmitzi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camponotus_schmitzi 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJw5hBB8-Os https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJw5hBB8-Os 2: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1440-6055.2003.00372.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1440-6055.... 3: https://myrmecos.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/question-ritualized-fighting-in-harvester-ants/ https://myrmecos.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/question-ritualize... 4: https://phys.org/news/2016-03-mortal-enemies-allies-ants.html https://phys.org/news/2016-03-mortal-enemies-allies-ants.htm... 5: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8127000/8127519.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8127000/812...
marmot777 8y ago
I’ve heard the concept of a “hive mind” before but this is extraordinary.
amelius 8y ago
Reminds me of this: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6828/was-the-experiment-with-five-monkeys-a-ladder-a-banana-and-a-water-spray-condu https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6828/was-the-ex...
oh_sigh 8y ago
This reminds me of the parable of the 5 monkeys: http://wiki.c2.com/?TheFiveMonkeys http://wiki.c2.com/?TheFiveMonkeys
cobbzilla 8y ago
ants have culture, ants have memes.
sandworm101 8y ago
>> Apr 23, 2014 - Almost 25 years since the Iron Curtain came down, deer roaming the Czech-German border still balk at crossing areas where electric fences one lay https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2611585/Deer-not-cross-old-iron-curtain-boundary-areas-electric-fences-lay-25-years-regime-fell.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2611585/Deer-not-cr... I also remember a story from the US. A high-security prison was removed, its razor wire fences torn down. Years later, GPS data showed an outline of the prison. The deer were still afraid of a fence that they had never themselves seen.
rpz 8y ago
This isnt very surprising me considering we humans--and probably most other living species--are pretty good at this. Memory seems to be an emergent property of a network.
robocat 8y ago
This is an example of an "extended phenotype" as written about in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Extended_Phenotype https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Extended_Phenotype by Richard Dawkins (invented the word meme). Great concept, although harder to grasp than The Selfish Gene. It is a bit like treating the ants as stateless functions, and storing the state in the world?
erikb 8y ago
Is it surprising? We do the same and call this culture. A set of behaviour rules that we inherit from previous generations, don't really need to understand but can still use it to increase our survival and which slowly adapts to big time environment changes.
pks016 8y ago
Nice article. It’s fascinating how the experiences of individuals can shape the behaviour of the colony in future. (I am interested in studying this in future.) I think the ants as simple input and output devices i.e. provide stimulus, get some results. But, the interaction of ants provides the output to the complex situations. When one observes the colony while doing any colony related function, one can see how each individual is assigned with specific function e.g. foraging, nursing etc. And suppose if you remove these ants, there will be a new set of individuals doing that function. Somewhat similar to the neurons of brain. (One has to compare the extent of similarities.) PS: I used to do research with ants. My master’s thesis was on colony cohesion. What are the factors important for the cohesion? I have looked at few aspects (physical) of this.
agumonkey 8y ago
So basically it's a massively legged delay line memory
qwerty456127 8y ago
Doesn't almost every community of living creatures retain memories that outlast the lifespans of individuals?

This is a lovely article, and I feel there's a lifetime of lessons to be learned from any colony behaviour. I've recently submitted a thesis on a swarm intelligence algorithm which exhibits some of these qualities, and the parallels between the two was a core component of the contribution. This effect, where something is globally stable, even though all the individuals that make it happen are unstable is sometimes described as "a forest whose contours remain the same, as the trees all change". Consider this algorithm for an ant colony foraging for a good source of food (this behaviour has also been observed in ants searching for a new nest site): for each ant in the swarm if the ant is unhappy run to a random ant if the random ant is happy follow it to its location if the random ant is unhappy select a location at random if the ant is happy the ant continues to search its current location for each ant in the swarm the ant searches a tiny of its location, at random if the ant finds food the ant becomes happy if the ant doesn't find food the ant becomes unhappy If you run this algorithm you will find a "clusters" of ants form, which is a number of ants who share the same foraging location. Importantly, and this is mathematically proven, the largest cluster will form in the location with the best probability for finding food. This algorithm works even when the locations change over time and, as in the article, even when the ants which found the location are replaced with ants who have simply followed other ants to get there. The aspect which captured my attention is that there are tiny changes to individual lines of the algorithm which implement diverse behaviours such as hill climbing, optimise for exploitation or exploration, and global optimisation. The algorithm is called Stochastic Diffusion Search and I'm in the process of polishing a Python library which implements it and its many variants for a Show HN :) The repo is here https://github.com/AndrewOwenMartin/sds https://github.com/AndrewOwenMartin/sds some info and an explanatory animation here http://www.aomartin.co.uk/sds-animation/ http://www.aomartin.co.uk/sds-animation/ and an beta version is already on PyPi here https://pypi.org/project/sds/ https://pypi.org/project/sds/. Contact me (email address on my profile) if you're interested in using this algorithm or contributing to the library, it needs snappy C implementations, and a better explanatory animation!

newman8r 8y ago
Could you model this as a cellular automaton? Kind of reminds me of that. Sounds cool.
- AndrewOMartin 8y ago
  Each ant, or "agent", just needs to store its "activity" (whether its happy or unhappy) and its "hypothesis" (its current location). You don't even need to store the hypothesis of inactive agents, so it's pretty minimal as it is, it's not clear how you would make it a cellular automaton. I have some ideas, but what did you have in mind?
  - newman8r 8y ago
    Take a look at this visualization https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsHc91IhzdI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsHc91IhzdI There's a repo in the description. Might not be specifically relevant to your project though
cgh 8y ago
Seems as good a time as any to mention this excellent book: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ant-colony-optimization https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ant-colony-optimization Really interesting stuff. There is code online somewhere. It's possible ant colony optimisation is dated now, I don't really know, but it's still fascinating.
blixt 8y ago
These emergent behaviors from relatively simple rules fascinate me. Have you seen https://pixling.world https://pixling.world ? It’s basically a tool to build systems with rules for both a grid (environments) and agents on that grid (pixlings). It’s quite advanced - every agent can have a neural network that is mutated to choose what rules to run instead of you hard coding it, and agents can split which causes a slight mutation in the new agent (evolution).
zachguo 8y ago
It reminds me my old days playing with NetLogo. Multi-agent modeling and complex system.

amatecha 8y ago

I mean, I feel like the wording "retain memories" might imply a greater degree of consciousness/agency than what was actually observed. The "memory" appears to be some completely tangible phenomenon, as per their comparison of trees "retaining memory" in the form of a tree growing bark around where a branch broke off. "Ants use the rate at which they meet and smell other ants, or the chemicals deposited by other ants, to decide what to do next." , etc. That said, it's still pretty interesting, and I think we can make some comparisons about how humans share knowledge/experience and what kind of tangible markers we use as cues for our own behaviour.

ergothus 8y ago
I'm not sure if I'm countering your point or supporting it, but I think a better example than trees is to point out how human cultures bear (and arguably, exist as different entities because of) after effects of events beyond the lifespans of those impacted. Example: the American trend of "you must finish all the food on your plate" has long outlived its origins, and has been continued on not because people consciously choose to continue so much as they dont consciously choose to STOP passing it on. Any number of social events that are not universal (tipping, suburbs vs downtown as being prosperous, etc) can be examined this way, and our reasonable but unthinking reactions to events help define our cultures. If we arent being conscious of these choices, how is this memory any different than the ants?
mLuby 8y ago
The concept of memory isn't related to consciousness; after all, we talk about computers having memory all the time. Rather than say everything short of humans doesn't really "remember", I find it much more interesting to think how similar our concept of remembering (reinforced neural connections) is to phenomena we don't think of as alive like rivers or pheromone trails.
Sharlin 8y ago
Human memories are a tangible physical phenomenon as well.
phs318u 8y ago
I think the wrong comparison is being made - humans to ants. The memory in this case doesn't belong to the ant but to the colony, which could be considered an organism in its own right. Similar to how large companies have "memory" (and behaviour) that outlast the term of employment of individual employees.

menzoic 8y ago

culture

commandlinefan 8y ago

CRAB: It's too bad, Achilles, that you weren't here last week, when Dr. Anteater and Aunt Hillary were my house guests. I should have thought of having you over then. ACHILLES: Is Aunt Hillary your aunt, Mr. Crab? CRAB: Oh, no, she's not really anybody's aunt. ANTEATER: But the poor dear insists that everybody should call her that, even strangers. It's just one of her many endearing quirks. CRAB: Yes, Aunt Hillary is quite eccentric, but such a merry old soul. It's a shame I didn't have you over to meet her last week. ANTEATER: She's certainly one of the best-educated ant colonies I have ever had the good fortune to know. The two of us have spent many a long evening in conversation on the widest range of topics. ACHILLES: I thought anteaters were devourers of ants, not patrons of ant-intellectualism! ANTEATER: Well, of course the two are not mutually inconsistent. I am on the best of terms with ant colonies. It's just ants that I eat, not colonies-and that is good for both parties: me, and the colony. - Douglas Hofstatder, "Godel, Escher and Bach"

mindgam3 8y ago

Fascinating. First thing that comes to mind is Family Systems theory of psychology. The idea is the family unit itself is treated as an entity that is sick, rather than any single “identified patient.” I like it because it provides a useful model for understanding transmission of observable patterns like child abuse or other behavioral problems across generations. If ants can do it for certain types of behavior, it certainly seems plausible that “human colonies” aka “families” can as well.

WalterBright 8y ago

These algorithms are similar to the ones I developed for the computer strategy for the Empire game. They worked, but I was unable to get them good enough to reliably defeat a human player. The first strategy I tried was simply randomness. It was pretty ineffective. A rule based one was also ineffective, as it tended to get itself into a box. But I found that adding a dose of randomness to the rule based strategy worked well. Most computer strategies of the day cheated, or altered the rules to give an advantage to the AI. Empire didn't. I did have thoughts about creating an interface so people could provide their own AIs and then the various AIs could battle it out. classicempire.com There's been a lot of research on the Life game. But I bet Empire would be a much better research platform - the rules are simple, but the game play can get pretty complex. I had a lot of fun developing AI algorithms for it. I wish the ant algorithms were known at the time, I bet they'd help! (One of the reasons the simple rules worked so well was the pieces had a hammer-paper-scissors relationship to each other.)

Rumudiez 8y ago
The game Armored Core: Formula Front for the PSP has a core mechanic that let’s players “program” their fighting robots in a destructured way. IIRC it’s about adding abilities and maneuvers that the AI can learn to use in combination while battling other AIs. It has a full campaign using this mechanic. Battling Amiibos in the Super Smash Bros game for the Wii U could be compared to this in a way, too.
swampthinker 8y ago
Hey Walter, did Sid Meier ever consult you while developing the Civilization series? I recognized a lot of similarities between Civ and Classic Empire when I went back and played the older games in the series.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  No, he never acknowledged Empire.
  - c3534l 8y ago

totalperspectiv 8y ago

The book A Deepness in the Sky (https://www.amazon.com/Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought/dp/0812536355 https://www.amazon.com/Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought/dp/0812536...) goes really deep (no pun intended) on this idea! I highly recommend it as some really solid sci-fi. It was full of big new ideas I had never conceived of before and often found myself sitting down just to think.

mLuby 8y ago
Likewise the short story "Glacial" in Alastair Reynolds's Galactic North book explores this concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_North#"Glacial" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_North#"Glacial"
wallstop 8y ago
Likewise Children of Time (https://www.amazon.com/Children-Time-Adrian-Tchaikovsky/dp/1447273303/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1544657316&sr=1-1&keywords=children+of+time https://www.amazon.com/Children-Time-Adrian-Tchaikovsky/dp/1...), another piece of solid sci-fi that explores some ideas about the development of "intelligence".

colin_fraizer 8y ago

The state endures until the emergence of "woke" drones who dedicate their time to signaling their moral superiority by decrying the colonialist nature of other community members, agitating for universal free nectar for all, and arguing that number of chromosomes does NOT determine ploidy!

8bitsrule 8y ago

An interesting definition of 'memory' (and 'history') includes the 'physical record' that we can decipher. Anthropologists study 'memories' left behind by ancient cultures that created artifacts. And the Earth keeps 'memories' of extinct animals in fossils ... and of geological events in rocks and landforms. DNA and epigenetics keep a 'memory' of lessons learned. Darwin 'remembered' evolution by the study of species. There's a valuable lesson to be learned here ... what record will 'digitization' leave behind?

leowoo91 8y ago

Carpenter ants built a nest in my apple tv, it took me 3 days to clear them out. I hope they don't remember it.

widforss 8y ago

I just traversed the ant part of Wikipedia, and this is what I found. > Queen ants have one of the longest life-spans of any known insect – up to 30 years. > The fertile eggs become female worker ants and unfertilized eggs develop as males; if the fertilized eggs and pupae are well-nurtured, they potentially become queens. > males are "quickly converted to sexual missiles." > the queens often try to escape the males, allowing only the fastest and the fittest males to mate. Mating takes place during flight. > One queen usually mates with several males. The sperm is stored in a special organ, known as a spermatheca, in the queen's abdomen, and lasts throughout her lifetime. This can be as long as 20 years, during which time the sperm can be used to fertilize tens of millions of eggs. > The males have evolved for the single purpose of inseminating the queen.[3] During "the quick and violent mating," the male literally explodes his internal genitalia into the genital chamber of the queen and quickly dies. And, moving on to army ants. > A nest is constructed out of the living ant workers' own bodies to protect the queen and larvae, and is later deconstructed as the ants move on. > As many as 150,000 to 700,000 worker bodies cover and protect the queen, linking legs and bodies in a mass that measures a meter across. > In the morning, the bivouac dissolves into raiding columns that form a fan-shaped front. These raiding columns can travel up to 20 metres per hour with lead workers laying a chemical trail for other workers to follow. Smaller workers lead the column, while larger, formidable soldiers protect the flanks. > When the queens emerge, the workers in the colony will form two 'systems' or arms in opposite directions. These queens that are hatched will move down either the arms and only two queens will succeed, one for each branch. The remaining new queens will be left in the middle and are abandoned to die. > The whole colony of army ants can consume up to 500,000 prey animals each day, so can have a significant influence on the population, diversity, and behavior of their prey. [...] About five species hunt in higher trees, where they can attack birds and their eggs, although they focus on hunting other social insects along with their eggs and larvae.

thenaturalist 8y ago
Ants really do provide a peek into the diversity of evolution and often how little we know about the world around us. I buried the dream of becoming a myrmecologist myself, but there is so much fascinating stuff to share. Ants can dive [0] and swim [1], and in mangrove forests adapted to survive extended periods with low O2 during flooding [2]. Some species have established ritual fights to solve territorial conflict [3] and while they are known to be fiercely territorial, there are species who defy the rule and fuse nests after intense fighting [4], or form mega colonies without hostility to strangers across globes - one of these mega colonies being located along the coast of California [5]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camponotus_schmitzi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camponotus_schmitzi 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJw5hBB8-Os https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJw5hBB8-Os 2: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1440-6055.2003.00372.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1440-6055.... 3: https://myrmecos.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/question-ritualized-fighting-in-harvester-ants/ https://myrmecos.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/question-ritualize... 4: https://phys.org/news/2016-03-mortal-enemies-allies-ants.html https://phys.org/news/2016-03-mortal-enemies-allies-ants.htm... 5: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8127000/8127519.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8127000/812...

marmot777 8y ago

I’ve heard the concept of a “hive mind” before but this is extraordinary.

amelius 8y ago

Reminds me of this: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6828/was-the-experiment-with-five-monkeys-a-ladder-a-banana-and-a-water-spray-condu https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6828/was-the-ex...

oh_sigh 8y ago

This reminds me of the parable of the 5 monkeys: http://wiki.c2.com/?TheFiveMonkeys http://wiki.c2.com/?TheFiveMonkeys

cobbzilla 8y ago

ants have culture, ants have memes.

sandworm101 8y ago

>> Apr 23, 2014 - Almost 25 years since the Iron Curtain came down, deer roaming the Czech-German border still balk at crossing areas where electric fences one lay https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2611585/Deer-not-cross-old-iron-curtain-boundary-areas-electric-fences-lay-25-years-regime-fell.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2611585/Deer-not-cr... I also remember a story from the US. A high-security prison was removed, its razor wire fences torn down. Years later, GPS data showed an outline of the prison. The deer were still afraid of a fence that they had never themselves seen.

rpz 8y ago

This isnt very surprising me considering we humans--and probably most other living species--are pretty good at this. Memory seems to be an emergent property of a network.

robocat 8y ago

This is an example of an "extended phenotype" as written about in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Extended_Phenotype https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Extended_Phenotype by Richard Dawkins (invented the word meme). Great concept, although harder to grasp than The Selfish Gene. It is a bit like treating the ants as stateless functions, and storing the state in the world?

erikb 8y ago

Is it surprising? We do the same and call this culture. A set of behaviour rules that we inherit from previous generations, don't really need to understand but can still use it to increase our survival and which slowly adapts to big time environment changes.

pks016 8y ago

Nice article. It’s fascinating how the experiences of individuals can shape the behaviour of the colony in future. (I am interested in studying this in future.) I think the ants as simple input and output devices i.e. provide stimulus, get some results. But, the interaction of ants provides the output to the complex situations. When one observes the colony while doing any colony related function, one can see how each individual is assigned with specific function e.g. foraging, nursing etc. And suppose if you remove these ants, there will be a new set of individuals doing that function. Somewhat similar to the neurons of brain. (One has to compare the extent of similarities.) PS: I used to do research with ants. My master’s thesis was on colony cohesion. What are the factors important for the cohesion? I have looked at few aspects (physical) of this.

agumonkey 8y ago

So basically it's a massively legged delay line memory

qwerty456127 8y ago

Doesn't almost every community of living creatures retain memories that outlast the lifespans of individuals?