4 ms·

The ants already sound much smarter than humans. Ants: use antibiotics to treat wounds Human: I'm not using that! It has microchips from Bill Gates in it!

pjmlp 3y ago
Well, it helps that ants don't question their overlords.
- bouvin 3y ago
  The real beauty is that ants do not have overlords – their intelligent behaviour is emergent, not centrally controlled.
  - datadeft 3y ago
    Yep it is kind of surprising: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony#Colony_structure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony#Colony_structure
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Ants don't rebel against the ways of their society, each ant knows their place and doesn't have aspirations to be something else, other than what it was predestined to be at birth. I guess there are a couple of movies about that. :)
  - ssener2001 3y ago
    tiny animals like ants cannot know order and balance . They are like tiny robots. By carrying out duties far exceeding its own power, everything testifies to the All-Powerful One’s existence "Yes, the All-Wise Creator summarizes the principles of the Clear Book in most beautiful form and abbreviated fashion and with a particular pleasure and through a special need, and includes them in beings. If everything acts thus with a particular pleasure out of a particular need, it unknowingly conforms to the principles of the Clear Book." Quran's Light
    - hdyddbbbbbb 3y ago
      Just to be clear you don't know that 'ants cannot know order' and are tiny robots. You are just making this up. You have to prove a statement like that. All evidence points to them being intelligent and you are just pushing a human oriented version of the world that minimizes the intelligent animals and insects that challenge your world view.
- otabdeveloper4 3y ago
  Ants don't have overlords. From the standpoint of genetics, one ant colony is a single organism. The queen mates only once in her life, before starting a colony. All the subsequent individual ants are from the genetic material of that foundational mating. When ants from different colonies meet (with different genetics lineages) they fight wars of total annihilation. Ant colonies do not cooperate.
  - eigenket 3y ago
    This is a bit simplistic, especially the last paragraph. There are quite a lot of examples of ants which aren't particularly related to each other cooperating [1]. Probably the most common example is that colonies which have been around for a while and are stable often adopt new queens that turn up from outside. Then multiple queens are producing workers and you get a colony made of many distinct "families". There are even examples of nests consisting of ants from different species. Quoting from the article I referenced earlier > Ants engaged in parabiotic associations cooperate in a variety of ways including shared nest defense, trophallaxis, and communal use of trail pheromones. For example, “ant gardens” in the Neotropics (Davidson, 1988; Orivel et al., 1997) and in Asian rainforests (Kaufmann and Maschwitz, 2006; Menzel and Bluthgen, 2010) are often co-inhabited by species from the genera Crematogaster and Camponotus (along with a number of other genera) .... While brood chambers are kept separate, the rest of the colonies mix freely within the joint nest. In addition to sharing foraging trails to plant-based resources (Menzel et al., 2010), both species will defend the nest although larger Camponotus tend to exhibit the majority of the defensive behaviors (Menzel and Bluthgen, 2010). [1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.736757/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.73675...
Arrath 3y ago
Human: Eh the inflammation is going down I don't need to finish this course of antibiotics. Human: To keep the animals I am factory farming relatively healthy, I will regularly douse them in antibiotics! Later: Wait why are these bacteria resistant to my antibiotics??

pjmlp 3y ago

Well, it helps that ants don't question their overlords.

bouvin 3y ago
The real beauty is that ants do not have overlords – their intelligent behaviour is emergent, not centrally controlled.
- datadeft 3y ago
  Yep it is kind of surprising: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony#Colony_structure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony#Colony_structure
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Ants don't rebel against the ways of their society, each ant knows their place and doesn't have aspirations to be something else, other than what it was predestined to be at birth. I guess there are a couple of movies about that. :)
- ssener2001 3y ago
  tiny animals like ants cannot know order and balance . They are like tiny robots. By carrying out duties far exceeding its own power, everything testifies to the All-Powerful One’s existence "Yes, the All-Wise Creator summarizes the principles of the Clear Book in most beautiful form and abbreviated fashion and with a particular pleasure and through a special need, and includes them in beings. If everything acts thus with a particular pleasure out of a particular need, it unknowingly conforms to the principles of the Clear Book." Quran's Light
  - hdyddbbbbbb 3y ago
    Just to be clear you don't know that 'ants cannot know order' and are tiny robots. You are just making this up. You have to prove a statement like that. All evidence points to them being intelligent and you are just pushing a human oriented version of the world that minimizes the intelligent animals and insects that challenge your world view.
otabdeveloper4 3y ago
Ants don't have overlords. From the standpoint of genetics, one ant colony is a single organism. The queen mates only once in her life, before starting a colony. All the subsequent individual ants are from the genetic material of that foundational mating. When ants from different colonies meet (with different genetics lineages) they fight wars of total annihilation. Ant colonies do not cooperate.
- eigenket 3y ago
  This is a bit simplistic, especially the last paragraph. There are quite a lot of examples of ants which aren't particularly related to each other cooperating [1]. Probably the most common example is that colonies which have been around for a while and are stable often adopt new queens that turn up from outside. Then multiple queens are producing workers and you get a colony made of many distinct "families". There are even examples of nests consisting of ants from different species. Quoting from the article I referenced earlier > Ants engaged in parabiotic associations cooperate in a variety of ways including shared nest defense, trophallaxis, and communal use of trail pheromones. For example, “ant gardens” in the Neotropics (Davidson, 1988; Orivel et al., 1997) and in Asian rainforests (Kaufmann and Maschwitz, 2006; Menzel and Bluthgen, 2010) are often co-inhabited by species from the genera Crematogaster and Camponotus (along with a number of other genera) .... While brood chambers are kept separate, the rest of the colonies mix freely within the joint nest. In addition to sharing foraging trails to plant-based resources (Menzel et al., 2010), both species will defend the nest although larger Camponotus tend to exhibit the majority of the defensive behaviors (Menzel and Bluthgen, 2010). [1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.736757/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.73675...

Arrath 3y ago

Human: Eh the inflammation is going down I don't need to finish this course of antibiotics. Human: To keep the animals I am factory farming relatively healthy, I will regularly douse them in antibiotics! Later: Wait why are these bacteria resistant to my antibiotics??