All they do is just walk around foraging for anything they can find that is edible, and then bringing it back to their hole. They do this all day long without ever taking a rest.
They don't even think about keeping what they find for themselves, nor do they steal something of value from a fellow ant either. No. They are all driven by this moral/ethics law which, impressively, is never enforced!
For all we know ants could have already invented neural implants to make this communistic code-of-behavior a living reality! This is why I think that they're the dominant species on this planet, so much that they use their knowledge and wisdom to make us, humans, think we are the dominant ones; somehow they found out, with the course of history, that we're prideful creatures. They are abusing this fact for their own good, given that in a situation of turmoil in between ants and men, we'd come up the victors, all because of our physical advantages. Even if we are one-hundredth as smart as they are.
Ants are a living testimony of a civilization that has reached absolute perfection, and will keep on being until the dawn of earth's future.
This is why I hate them so much and find them to be outrageous! Who's with me?
Poll: Well?
No, it's isn't that outrageous. (41)
64%
Yes, it's outrageous. (23)
36%
64 total votes
Your vote: Well?
(Vote): Yes, it's outrageous. (Vote): No, it's isn't that outrageous.
Even though this is a joke blog, ant "intelligence" is a very interesting topic.
Ants actually "communicate" through pheromones... they drop pheromone trails when they walk around looking for food, where the trail is stronger if they sense food nearby, and are attracted to other ant's pheromone trails. After they walk around at random, biased by others' trails, the pheromone ends up concentrating into a shortest path from the ant nest to the food source... so that's why you have so many ants walking the same path and bringing food back and forth.
Anyway, ants themselves have extremely low intelligence, but evolution stumbled upon this food-finding mechanism that works through swarm intelligence. It's actually a technique that artificial intelligence researchers try emulating every now and then to find solutions to problems.
I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.
It's obviously a completely valid question. It's just one of those things that you never think of until someone mentions it you know...
And even though ant's may not be very smart, we can't really prove it. Even if we could prove that they weren't hiding their intelligence from us, who's to say that an ant couldn't have come down to earth and died for our sins in his son form only to revive three days later and start a religion?
The blog title also sneakily raises the question of whether people are as clueless as the ants they fry with a magnifying glass as children. I mean think about it: what he described the gathering of food, could easily be transcribed to humans. We work to make money to buy food. Same thing really. Do we have any more meaning than the ant? I think not.
Since the OP is almost trolling by doing this blog response to the other 'clueless' blog, I thought it would be safe to try some trolling of my own. The dark side is strong. And trolling is easy. It's also somewhat fun.
On April 14 2010 08:53 N.geNuity wrote: I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.
He is also very tasty and there is a lot of good meat on him.
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. -Proverbs 6:6-8
On April 14 2010 08:19 EsX_Raptor wrote: I can't believe how ants can be so retarded.
All they do is just walk around foraging for anything they can find that is edible, and then bringing it back to their hole. They do this all day long without ever taking a rest.
They don't even think about keeping what they find for themselves, nor do they steal something of value from a fellow ant either. No. They are all driven by this moral/ethics law which, impressively, is never enforced!
For all we know ants could have already invented neural implants to make this communistic code-of-behavior a living reality! This is why I think that they're the dominant species on this planet, so much that they use their knowledge and wisdom to make us, humans, think we are the dominant ones; somehow they found out, with the course of history, that we're prideful creatures. They are abusing this fact for their own good, given that in a situation of turmoil in between ants and men, we'd come up the victors, all because of our physical advantages. Even if we are one-hundredth as smart as they are.
Ants are a living testimony of a civilization that has reached absolute perfection, and will keep on being until the dawn of earth's future.
This is why I hate them so much and find them to be outrageous! Who's with me?
Poll: Well?
No, it's isn't that outrageous. (41)
64%
Yes, it's outrageous. (23)
36%
64 total votes
Your vote: Well?
(Vote): Yes, it's outrageous. (Vote): No, it's isn't that outrageous.
Someone has been reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy too much... XD
There is generally only a single reproductive unit per colony. I think this is the main reason they're so communal in design. Individual worker females have no genetic legacy of their own to perpetuate and thus have not developed individualistic survival tendencies.
Argentine Ants (Linepithema humile) - the most successful ant species globally; it is an invasive species that has spread from Argentina to most of the planet (all continents excluding Antarctica) and are displacing all native ant species with which they come into contact at an alarming rate...
and btw, they are one super-colony:
--- According to research published in Insectes Sociaux in 2009, it was discovered that ants from three Argentine ant supercolonies in America, Europe and Japan, that were previously thought to be separate, were in fact most likely to be genetically related. The three colonies in question were one in Europe, stretching 6,000 km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, the "Californian large" colony, stretching 900 km (560 miles) along the coast of California, and a third on the west coast of Japan.
Based on a similarity in the chemical profile of hydrocarbons on their cuticles of the ants from each colony, and on the ants non-aggressive and grooming behaviour when interacting, compared to their behaviour when mixing with ants from other super-colonies from the coast of Catalonia in Spain and from Kobe in Japan, researchers concluded that the three colonies studied actually represented a single global super-colony.
The researchers stated that "enormous extent of this population is paralleled only by human society", and had probably been spread and maintained by human travel." ---- source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_ant
On April 14 2010 13:05 Ideas wrote: ants will only find perfection once they overcome racial tensions between red and black ants.
I hate to break it to you but in Alabama they have already formed hybrids: the Black Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis richteri, is very similar to the Red Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis invictus (i.e. your most common and prevalent "fire ant"). The Black Imported Fire Ant and the red/black hybridization is currently limited to a small area of northern Mississippi and Alabama - I know, odd coincidence given your quote lol.. Anyway myrmecologists have long thought that the Black and Red Fire Ants were two distinct species that it is until very recently when was discovered that hybrids of these ants produce viable offspring (naturally).. now some even postulate that they are simply two races of the same species..
Btw the Black Fire Ants and its Red cousin brother(?) both come here from Argentina too : ) -
I dunno about perfect... I mean it kind of romanticizes the whole deal by saying they work towards a collective gain without reward. Lots of insects (such as bees) do exactly the same thing. I agree that ants do some really amazing things, and that lifeboat was really cool... but there are cooler things in the animal kingdom out there.
On April 14 2010 11:06 evanthebouncy! wrote: Lol... Ant's don't know what's honor they just do it. Why do they do it? Because the one who doesn't do it died. that's all.
+1 morality and ethics are human inventions which have no place in the world of animals ants are reflex machines driven by instincts, and once an ants behavior deviates far enough from the collective's it will be brutally murdered and possibly cannibalized natures a bitch
Lol, ants will definitely win if it came to an ants vs humans battle. They can ruin all our food, they can walk inside you when you sleep and eat you from the inside out. So many options.
On April 15 2010 06:44 Navane wrote: Lol, ants will definitely win if it came to an ants vs humans battle. They can ruin all our food, they can walk inside you when you sleep and eat you from the inside out. So many options.
Not to mention, they could just straight-up win in a fight. There's something like 100 times more ants BY MASS than humans on the earth. Can you fight off 100x your weight of anything? Nevermind little critters that can bite you and crawl in you and shit. Fuck that.
'One study of Odontomachus bauri recorded peak speeds of between 126 and 230 km/h (78 - 143 mph), with the jaws closing within 130 microseconds on average. The ants were also observed to use their jaws as a catapult to eject intruders or fling themselves backwards to escape a threat.'
This seems to me to be related to the philosophical zombie problem. ... Yeah, in fact I'm reading it exactly as the philosophical zombie problem. But I'm sure there's other ways of seeing it, too.
On April 15 2010 06:44 Navane wrote: Lol, ants will definitely win if it came to an ants vs humans battle. They can ruin all our food, they can walk inside you when you sleep and eat you from the inside out. So many options.
But what they lack are the brains to do any of that. Humans would win, no contest.
EPT
