Ants That (Probably) Do Not Exist
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@futurebird I mean, we probably wouldn't even realize for a long time if actual current-day ants started using tiny flint chips as handaxes, but there'd very likely be nothing left at all in a hundred years, let alone 200 million.
But I'm also not really sure how useful flint tools would even be for ants? They live in a world where surface tension is a bigger worry than gravity is, and I'm not sure how much useful work they'd even be able to do with stone tools that they can't do with their natural bodies.
The ways ant use their front legs and mandibles astound me. For example, if an ant needs to dig she my pick up a ball of dirt and move it in her mandibles as you'd expect. But if the soil is dry and sandy she will turn around and fling dirt between her four back legs using her two front legs.
Ants use their front legs to deftly position objects so they can pick them up in their mandibles at the correct angle, they use their antennae and front legs to pack down sand.
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I think it would be like what you find in ants today. The individuals are very intelligent as far as insects go, and make a wide range of complex choices, learn, and adapt their environments.
The colony intelligence is like an overlay. The individuals might seem simple, but together they would casually and incrementally do astounding things without totally understanding what they were doing.
So... "both."
@futurebird @Phosphenes Individual bees are *shockingly* intelligent. They need to be, really - they need to communicate as complex things to each other as ants do, but they can't leave chemical trails (obviously) so they need a more complex system of "talking" to each other and good memory.
Ants' "collective intelligence" can accomplish more things than bees', though, precisely because they can coordinate rapidly in ways that bees can't.
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The ways ant use their front legs and mandibles astound me. For example, if an ant needs to dig she my pick up a ball of dirt and move it in her mandibles as you'd expect. But if the soil is dry and sandy she will turn around and fling dirt between her four back legs using her two front legs.
Ants use their front legs to deftly position objects so they can pick them up in their mandibles at the correct angle, they use their antennae and front legs to pack down sand.
There is just so much complexity and responsiveness in the way ants manipulate their environment, in just their basic locomotion that I think we take for granted.
I think about how one would program a robot to do such things and my mind boggles.
How does the ant decide *how* to move the soil? It could be as simple as trying each more energy intensive method until one works. But that still means that the ants must have some notion of the abstract goal of moving the soil.
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There is just so much complexity and responsiveness in the way ants manipulate their environment, in just their basic locomotion that I think we take for granted.
I think about how one would program a robot to do such things and my mind boggles.
How does the ant decide *how* to move the soil? It could be as simple as trying each more energy intensive method until one works. But that still means that the ants must have some notion of the abstract goal of moving the soil.
I've seen ants with larger mandibles using their head like a snow plow to move debris.
Is that just an instinctive pattern, or do the ants invent these ways of solving the problem?
Once an ant finds a method thats effective she sticks to it and does it more often. So I think there must be some learning. And little ants never do the "snow plow" move because presumably, if they tried it, it wouldn't be as effective.
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The ways ant use their front legs and mandibles astound me. For example, if an ant needs to dig she my pick up a ball of dirt and move it in her mandibles as you'd expect. But if the soil is dry and sandy she will turn around and fling dirt between her four back legs using her two front legs.
Ants use their front legs to deftly position objects so they can pick them up in their mandibles at the correct angle, they use their antennae and front legs to pack down sand.
@futurebird That's sorta what I mean. Are there really anything an ant (even a hypothetical sapient one) would ever need to do that it'd need to carry around a piece of sharpened stone for? It seems to me a primate-scale approach more than an ant-scale one.
(If I were to do a fictional ant civilization, I'd let the "spark of sapience" be associated with some kind of genome manipulation rather than with primate-style toolmaking or even symbolic language. Seems a lot more antish!
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@futurebird @Phosphenes Individual bees are *shockingly* intelligent. They need to be, really - they need to communicate as complex things to each other as ants do, but they can't leave chemical trails (obviously) so they need a more complex system of "talking" to each other and good memory.
Ants' "collective intelligence" can accomplish more things than bees', though, precisely because they can coordinate rapidly in ways that bees can't.
I tend to think that one of the reasons you see intelligence develop across living things is for group coordination.
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@futurebird That's sorta what I mean. Are there really anything an ant (even a hypothetical sapient one) would ever need to do that it'd need to carry around a piece of sharpened stone for? It seems to me a primate-scale approach more than an ant-scale one.
(If I were to do a fictional ant civilization, I'd let the "spark of sapience" be associated with some kind of genome manipulation rather than with primate-style toolmaking or even symbolic language. Seems a lot more antish!
)If ants could make very sharp blades they might be useful. For surgery or manipulating plant seeds.
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Ants That (Probably) Do Not Exist
1. Cave Ants
2. Sea Ants
3. Time Ants
4. Space Ants
5. Cloud Ants
6. Ice Ants@futurebird Ants need to level themselves up if they're going to catch up with Pikmin!
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@grumpydad @futurebird MASSIVE ants.
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I tend to think that one of the reasons you see intelligence develop across living things is for group coordination.
@futurebird @Phosphenes Octopuses are solitary, though.
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@grumpydad @futurebird MASSIVE ants.
There is some evidence that ants were once a bit larger. But probably the largest ants alive today are as large as they have ever been (about 2cm long for workers 3cm for queens)
Ants the size of apples could rule the world. I think we all know that. Think about coconut crab ants. Someday perhaps.
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@futurebird @Phosphenes Octopuses are solitary, though.
Yeah. So not always. But I do think it's a driving factor in some cases.
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That old psudoscience story about a vast vanished ancient civilization that lived on early earth and left little evidence that they existed.
But they were ants. They live 200 million years ago and left for space and we find out about them when they return in their space habitats to check on the old home planet and see how things are going.
@futurebird WhAt happens when they find out it has been taken over by a psudo-inteligent ape?
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If ants could make very sharp blades they might be useful. For surgery or manipulating plant seeds.
@futurebird Sure, but I'm not sure there'd be any good way to make a sharp flint blade that scale. Possibly obsidian ones?
But, again, I think it'd be more antish to figure out a way to spawn a few workers on-demand with incredibly sharp mandibles (perhaps with zinc blades, like leafcutters?) than to make a sharp piece of stone or glass to carry around.
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Yeah. So not always. But I do think it's a driving factor in some cases.
@futurebird @Phosphenes In humans, it *definitely* is - and in general, high intelligence tends to be associated with social behaviour. Caveat: Humans define "high intelligence" as "acting somewhat like humans do", and we're highly social, so...
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@futurebird Sure, but I'm not sure there'd be any good way to make a sharp flint blade that scale. Possibly obsidian ones?
But, again, I think it'd be more antish to figure out a way to spawn a few workers on-demand with incredibly sharp mandibles (perhaps with zinc blades, like leafcutters?) than to make a sharp piece of stone or glass to carry around.
I think that's sensible. Ants might also find a method to make their mandible sharper for such purposes. So the tools might be more like body modifications.
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