1Josh Klein

Sorry for the totally irrelevant comment to the main point, but when you said "you hardly ever hear about predators to bees" it immediately reminded me of this video (30 hornets defeating a hive of 30,000 bees): http://www.metacafe.com/watch/28566/bee_vs_wasp/

Anyway...

I feel like the Ender's Game series does a fair job of exploring this philosophical line of thinking. In the story, the reason for humanity's eventual triumph over the buggers is humanity's ability to have individually rational self-interested behaviors OR sacrifice themselves for a greater purpose.

Choice.

I suppose it all leads back to fundamental questions about competition and efficient outcomes.

(Side note: this comment had me wandering into wikipedia entries for Pareto efficiency versus Kaldor-Hicks efficiency. Check those out)

Is our inherent intra-human competitiveness the trait that in fact makes us the dominant species?

Questions too big for me to answer.

March 6, 2009

2Matt Daniels

I know, it's Friday, but if willing to philosophize for a moment, check out the China Brain problem from philosophy of the mind.

To your point about ants representing limbs of the body, parts of the whole (humans representing a larger culture): the China Brain is a thought experiment from philosophy that supposes what would happen if each person in China simulated the action of one neuron in the brain.

March 6, 2009

3Vikram Alexei Kansara

Interesting piece on ants as superorganism:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22356

-V

March 6, 2009

4ana

um. culture. not sure if i believe that reverting to the Leviathan thinking about society is something I would necessarily buy. Evoking 19th century political philosophy might be slightly retro :)

But! your thingy reminded me of what I read about how even stuff like light-bulbs, can self-organize. (?)

True story:"theoretical biologist Stuart Kaufmann constructed a network of 200 light bulbs, connecting one bulb to the behavior of only two others (using Boolean logic). For example, light bulb 23 could be instructed to go on if bulb 46 went on, and to go off if bulb 67 went on. The assigned connections were always random and limited to only two. Once the network was switched on, different configurations of on-and-off bulbs would illuminate. The number of possible on/off configurations is 10 to the 30th, a number of inconceivable possibilities. Given these numbers, we would expect chaos to rule. But it doesn't. The system settles instantly (on about the fourteenth iteration) into a pattern of on/off bulbs that it then continues to repeat."

March 6, 2009

5Matt

Reminds me of "The Selfish Gene." It showed how animals act not in their own best interest, but to maximize their genes. (In other words, you may not run into a burning building filled with strangers, but you would run into one if your child was inside.) If my memory serves me correctly, it included information about how ants behave differently when predators like anteaters show up, depending on how many of their relatives are nearby.

March 6, 2009

6Sriram Venkitachalam

Love the post. LOVE the video. Blew my mind.
For me the most important part of Audrey Dussutour's interview was the last statement, that ants too collide. I think when researchers look at ants mostly it is from such a macro perspective that it probably is impossible to gather information about their faults and how ants quickly resolve them (am I'm saying that without any substantiation). I think a profound learning could come from unearthing (no pun intended) how ants argue and quickly come to the conclusion that they should move to the longer but broader route (when the shorter is too narrow).

March 7, 2009

7barbara

It's a little bit of a stretch, I know, but the ants plus reference to the China brain experiment immediately made me think of the Chinese performances during the opening ceremonies for the Olympics. Maybe it's just a factor of population size, but it would be hard to think of another culture that could get that many people to act that synchronously in that complex a pattern. It strikes me that there's a age-old nature/nurture thing at play in China based on widespread poverty, longstanding political pressure and an even longer history of protecting themselves against outside forces. In other words, the Chinese seem to be acculturated to not rushing the loading ants. I'd guess the same is true of the ants.

March 7, 2009

8Steven Kalifowitz

Funny you should write this - I was just doing a bit of reading about new thoughts on evolution - specifically as it relates to "super organisms". A super organism is exactly what you're referring to when you suggest that each ant (or bee) in a colony is like one cell of our body. But more importantly (or interestingly) is the idea that all the ants are working with distributed intelligence.

Here are some articles you can read:
Superorganism as Window Into Complexity and Evolution

A Brief History of the Superorganism, Part One

A Brief History of the Superorganism, Part One

March 7, 2009

9Nick Baum

Steven Berlin Johnson's "Emergence" is a great read on how complex behavior can emerge from simple parts. It talks about ants, but also cities, the internets, and more.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684868768/stevenberlinj-20

-Nick

March 9, 2009

10pierreyann

durkheim talks about "mecanic solidarity" and "organic solidarity", whereas the second one is an aggregate of individual will/desires and the pursue of a common good [e.g. most modern societies], while in the first one, at its paroxysm, "the individual doesn't belong to itself" [...] "the individual conscience is a dependent on the collective and follow its every movement".
that's probably not the best translation of its work but still..
cheeers

March 12, 2009

11Sofft

I saw a video on the whole colony of Ants, it was amazing. You should also check it out on youtube.

March 28, 2009

12In my day...

In my day, we didn't have armies of ants directing traffic like they do now. All combustible vehicles ran on roads that converged into town where my gal Madge was the traffictress. And she did a darn good job too, except for her occasionally getting flattened by a wooden steamroller. But by gum I'd fluff her back up to regular size, and she was as good as new!

November 4, 2009