5 ms·

Ant responses to social isolation resemble those of humans

66 points by dnetesn 6y ago

pks016 6y ago
I have worked with ants specifically fragmentation of ant colonies. I would say the responses to isolation are much more severe than human isolation. If an individual ant get separated from the colony, it will just die (Mostly). Also they usually can't join other ant colonies because of colony specific odor/hydrocarbon.
- k_sze 6y ago
  A counter anecdatum: I have been keeping a lone, unmated Pseudoneoponera rufipes queen since August 2020. Since she is unmated, she cannot produce any worker. She just keeps eating all the eggs she lays after a few days. I keep her in a test tube nest and feed her fruit flies. She's still alive and kicking as of this writing. And she still has hunter instincts when I give her a weakened, but live little fly. Maybe queens are more resilient to solitude?
  - pks016 6y ago
    Definitely.Queen can produce the whole colony. She is more resilient than workers and vital part of the colony. Depending on the species, they can live longer or shorter but like the article says the life won't be smooth.
    - amelius 6y ago
      So, cruel experiment.
  - op03 6y ago
    The Buddha was pretty much a queen.
  - rsync 6y ago
    "A counter anecdatum: I have been keeping a lone, unmated Pseudoneoponera rufipes queen since August 2020." Aren't you comparing very unlike things ? Specifically, your queen is roughly analogous to an individual, as we think of it. Your parent speaks of a worker ant that is more analogous to an individuals toe or tastebud or something like that ... To put it another way, you have one "ant" (a colony of one individual). Your parent has zero ant (colonies).
    - coldtea 6y ago
      The ants, queen or regular worker, are all complete organisms, so the explanation falls short. Just that the queen is more used to live in isolation (some ant species/colonies just have a single queen ant), whereas the workers are more used to cooperation and collective existance.
      - rsync 6y ago
        "The ants, queen or regular worker, are all complete organisms, so the explanation falls short." Yes, but they are not "individuals" as we commonly reference. It's loose, but the best analogy for an human individual is the queen ant/bee/termite and the entire hive, or nest - with all the workers, etc. - are part of that queens own "extended phenotype": "After the gene-centered view of evolution was developed in the mid 1970s, non-reproductive individuals were seen as an extended phenotype of the genes, which are the primary beneficiaries of natural selection."[1] An individual worker ant is, to the queen, better thought of as one of your hairs or one of your tastebuds. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality#Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality#Paradox
- User23 6y ago
  I don't imagine the typical individual human surviving very long under total isolation either.
  - rriepe 6y ago
    If you adjust for lifespan, we probably do worse overall.
    - User23 6y ago
      I mean more that I suspect the average (sub)urbanite would suffer an Oregon Trail style death inside of three months without access to the things society offers like, for example, antibiotics.
      - rriepe 6y ago
        I'm agreeing. I'm saying the three months is just as bad as (or worse than) their three hours, if you consider that we live for decades and they live for days.
rossdavidh 6y ago
"Isolated people become lonely, depressed, and anxious, develop addictions more easily, and suffer from a weakened immune system and impaired overall health," added Professor Inon Scharf, lead author of the article and cooperation partner of the Mainz research group at Tel Aviv University in Israel. ...like, say, an addiction to social media?
- gumby 6y ago
  I found social media to have helped me during the lockdowns of the past year. I was not a huge user before but over t past year I think I've spent a couple of hours a day staying in touch with people electronically, often mediated/enabled by FB ("Hey, why don't I call so-and-so?").
pazimzadeh 6y ago
From the 1984 essay Xenopsychology by Robert Freitas Jr: http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm The elements of human nature: Age-grading, athletic sports, bodily adornment, calendar, cleanliness training, community organizations, cooking, cooperative labor, cosmology, courtship, dancing, decorative art. divination, division of labor, dream interpretation, education, eschatology, ethics, ethnobotany, etiquette, faith healing. family feasting, firemaking, folklore, food taboos, funeral rites, games, gestures, gift giving, government, greetings, hairstyles, hospitality, housing, hygiene, incest taboos, inheritance rules, joking, kin groups, kinship nomenclature, language, law, luck superstitions, magic,. marriage, mealtimes, medicine, obstetrics, penal sanctions, personal names, population policy, postnatal care, pregnancy usages, property rights, propitiation of supernatural beings, puberty customs, religious rituals, residence rules, sexual restrictions, soul concepts, status differentiation, surgery, toolmaking, trade, visiting, weaving, and weather control. The elements of an insect-like intelligence: Age-grading, antennal rites, body licking, calendar, cannibalism, caste determinism, caste laws, colony-foundation rules, colony organization, cleanliness training, communal nurseries, cooperative labor, cosmology, courtship, division of labor, drone control, education, eschatology, ethics, etiquette, euthanasia, firemaking, food taboos, gift-giving, government, greetings, grooming rituals, hospitality, hosing, hygiene, incest taboos, language, larval care, law, medicine, metamorphosis rites, mutual regurgitation, nursing castes, nuptial flights, nutrient eggs, population policy, queen obeisance, residence rules, sex determination, solder castes, sisterhoods, status differentiation, sterile workers, surgery, symbiont care, toolmaking, trade, visiting, weather control …
sitkack 6y ago
Isolating an ant from its colony for 12 hours https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74xygxN7h_Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74xygxN7h_Q

66 points by dnetesn 6y ago

I have worked with ants specifically fragmentation of ant colonies. I would say the responses to isolation are much more severe than human isolation. If an individual ant get separated from the colony, it will just die (Mostly). Also they usually can't join other ant colonies because of colony specific odor/hydrocarbon.

k_sze 6y ago
A counter anecdatum: I have been keeping a lone, unmated Pseudoneoponera rufipes queen since August 2020. Since she is unmated, she cannot produce any worker. She just keeps eating all the eggs she lays after a few days. I keep her in a test tube nest and feed her fruit flies. She's still alive and kicking as of this writing. And she still has hunter instincts when I give her a weakened, but live little fly. Maybe queens are more resilient to solitude?
- pks016 6y ago
  Definitely.Queen can produce the whole colony. She is more resilient than workers and vital part of the colony. Depending on the species, they can live longer or shorter but like the article says the life won't be smooth.
  - amelius 6y ago
    So, cruel experiment.
- op03 6y ago
  The Buddha was pretty much a queen.
- rsync 6y ago
  "A counter anecdatum: I have been keeping a lone, unmated Pseudoneoponera rufipes queen since August 2020." Aren't you comparing very unlike things ? Specifically, your queen is roughly analogous to an individual, as we think of it. Your parent speaks of a worker ant that is more analogous to an individuals toe or tastebud or something like that ... To put it another way, you have one "ant" (a colony of one individual). Your parent has zero ant (colonies).
  - coldtea 6y ago
    The ants, queen or regular worker, are all complete organisms, so the explanation falls short. Just that the queen is more used to live in isolation (some ant species/colonies just have a single queen ant), whereas the workers are more used to cooperation and collective existance.
    - rsync 6y ago
      "The ants, queen or regular worker, are all complete organisms, so the explanation falls short." Yes, but they are not "individuals" as we commonly reference. It's loose, but the best analogy for an human individual is the queen ant/bee/termite and the entire hive, or nest - with all the workers, etc. - are part of that queens own "extended phenotype": "After the gene-centered view of evolution was developed in the mid 1970s, non-reproductive individuals were seen as an extended phenotype of the genes, which are the primary beneficiaries of natural selection."[1] An individual worker ant is, to the queen, better thought of as one of your hairs or one of your tastebuds. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality#Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality#Paradox
User23 6y ago
I don't imagine the typical individual human surviving very long under total isolation either.
- rriepe 6y ago
  If you adjust for lifespan, we probably do worse overall.
  - User23 6y ago
    I mean more that I suspect the average (sub)urbanite would suffer an Oregon Trail style death inside of three months without access to the things society offers like, for example, antibiotics.
    - rriepe 6y ago
      I'm agreeing. I'm saying the three months is just as bad as (or worse than) their three hours, if you consider that we live for decades and they live for days.

rossdavidh 6y ago

"Isolated people become lonely, depressed, and anxious, develop addictions more easily, and suffer from a weakened immune system and impaired overall health," added Professor Inon Scharf, lead author of the article and cooperation partner of the Mainz research group at Tel Aviv University in Israel. ...like, say, an addiction to social media?

gumby 6y ago
I found social media to have helped me during the lockdowns of the past year. I was not a huge user before but over t past year I think I've spent a couple of hours a day staying in touch with people electronically, often mediated/enabled by FB ("Hey, why don't I call so-and-so?").

pazimzadeh 6y ago

From the 1984 essay Xenopsychology by Robert Freitas Jr: http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm The elements of human nature: Age-grading, athletic sports, bodily adornment, calendar, cleanliness training, community organizations, cooking, cooperative labor, cosmology, courtship, dancing, decorative art. divination, division of labor, dream interpretation, education, eschatology, ethics, ethnobotany, etiquette, faith healing. family feasting, firemaking, folklore, food taboos, funeral rites, games, gestures, gift giving, government, greetings, hairstyles, hospitality, housing, hygiene, incest taboos, inheritance rules, joking, kin groups, kinship nomenclature, language, law, luck superstitions, magic,. marriage, mealtimes, medicine, obstetrics, penal sanctions, personal names, population policy, postnatal care, pregnancy usages, property rights, propitiation of supernatural beings, puberty customs, religious rituals, residence rules, sexual restrictions, soul concepts, status differentiation, surgery, toolmaking, trade, visiting, weaving, and weather control. The elements of an insect-like intelligence: Age-grading, antennal rites, body licking, calendar, cannibalism, caste determinism, caste laws, colony-foundation rules, colony organization, cleanliness training, communal nurseries, cooperative labor, cosmology, courtship, division of labor, drone control, education, eschatology, ethics, etiquette, euthanasia, firemaking, food taboos, gift-giving, government, greetings, grooming rituals, hospitality, hosing, hygiene, incest taboos, language, larval care, law, medicine, metamorphosis rites, mutual regurgitation, nursing castes, nuptial flights, nutrient eggs, population policy, queen obeisance, residence rules, sex determination, solder castes, sisterhoods, status differentiation, sterile workers, surgery, symbiont care, toolmaking, trade, visiting, weather control …

sitkack 6y ago

Isolating an ant from its colony for 12 hours https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74xygxN7h_Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74xygxN7h_Q