I know what you mean... I like to think that the second colony was dead but you could see some ants scurrying about in the area...

Isn't it fucked up how in our quest for knowledge of something that is, though fascinating, more or less trivial to our existence, we destroy everything? They came to an ant colony, filled it with cement, excavated it, and then have the balls to name it one of the great monuments of the world, the equivalent of The Great Wall of China. What the fuck?

Diggity

United States806 Posts

January 18 2008 20:53 GMT

#18

dont they like kill the ants?

Sok...I'm sure the ants got out as soon as they realized what was happening and relocated someplace else. They aren't retarded.

I dont have back up numbers for this but I am pretty sure that ants out number humans something like 2:1. And thats just ants.

ilovejonn

Canada2548 Posts

January 18 2008 21:08 GMT

#19

Woah, amazing. It's like a castle! @_@

azndsh

United States4447 Posts

January 18 2008 21:19 GMT

#20

aliens
superorganism
collective mind
etc

I did not enjoy the lack of science and tone in the narration
awesome stuff though

foeffa

Belgium2115 Posts

January 19 2008 00:06 GMT

#21

That's some tough shit for those ants, you're just like chilling and building your uberleet colony, and one day some dudes stop by and just poor it full of cement. :p

Cool result though.

Titusmaster6

United States5937 Posts

January 19 2008 01:02 GMT

#22

"It's equal to the Great Wall of China."

So basically it's nothing we haven't done before. Humans 1, Ants 0.

thoraxe

United States1449 Posts

January 19 2008 01:29 GMT

#23

On January 19 2008 03:41 Hawk wrote:
That's fuckin sick. I wonder how long it took them to dig that all out

If you'd watch the video and pay attention, you'd know.

fanatacist

10319 Posts

January 19 2008 02:30 GMT

#24

On January 19 2008 10:02 Titusmaster6 wrote:
"It's equal to the Great Wall of China."

So basically it's nothing we haven't done before. Humans 1, Ants 0.

Except ants have done this for ages before the Great Wall, without the technology we have, without a written or oral language, and without any casualties.

Chef

10810 Posts

January 19 2008 04:16 GMT

#25

Somehow this makes me think of an FFA with newbies. Half the players are just sitting around making pretty bases, and then someone comes in with their giant army and ruins it all for them, and they never see it coming.

Kinda cool and scary at the same time how preprogrammed ants are. It's like they might as well just be machines.

and without any casualties.

That's unlikely :D

allowicious

United States972 Posts

January 19 2008 05:34 GMT

#26

wow, great find, really mindblowing how these ants have the ability to create such a large city like that

Rev0lution

United States1805 Posts

January 19 2008 05:53 GMT

#27

I wish i had the science channel in my cable premium. Its a real bitch

micronesia

United States24679 Posts

January 19 2008 07:03 GMT

#28

On January 19 2008 05:53 Diggity wrote:
I dont have back up numbers for this but I am pretty sure that ants out number humans something like 2:1. And thats just ants.

Er what? That sounds very off. Wikipedia offers: ants make up up to 15-25% of the total terrestrial animal biomass (on Earth).

That video started me thinking about ways to put this amazing phenomenon to work... and then I thought of I Am Legend.

RzzE

Germany20 Posts

January 19 2008 23:01 GMT

#29

I've just had an interesting thought on the evolution of the colony's hive mind: How does natural selection account for the optimisation of the colony's architecture?

I was thinking that a random mutation in a lowly worker ant that changes its behaviour in a favourable way (e.g. making it want to build a ventilation shaft in a slightly more optimal fashion) would never even provide the colony with a survival advantage, since the single ant's contribution is almost negligible over the colony's scale.

Then I realised that that line of thought is meaningless anyway, since worker ants are sterile and wouldn't pass on any random mutations, even if they provided a survival advantage. The only mutations that are relevant therefore are on the queens and the male drones. A mutation on the queen that causes her to produce an offspring with a slightly modified behaviour would produce a significant survival advantage for the entire colony, since a significant portion of the colony's worker ants would have been modified. Essentially the "hive mind" has evolved further and e.g. the ventilation shafts are constructed in a slightly more optimum way.

This begs the question of whether it is even possible for a hive mind to evolve through natural selection for a society without a "queen figure". I can't think of how it could work.

Can anybody think of a counterexample - a species that exhibits "hive" like behaviour without a queen? Or does natural selection imply that hives must always have a queen?

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