Tiny Jenga: Ants can sense which soil grains to remove when digging tunnels

Caltech scientists used X-ray imaging to capture physics of underground ant hills.

Read the whole story

 

[jep123]

So they pull out the piece that is most likely to fuck over the next ant to pull one?

 

[Nerdboi]

Excellent article Jennifer. If there is more on this subject in the future I will be super happy to read it.

 

[jandrese]

This is pretty obvious when you think about it. A loose grain is much less likely to be supporting something else, so removing it won't cause a collapse.

 

[malor]

You can pour fire ants from a teapot, for instance

Do not try this at home.

 

[fractl]

You can pour fire ants from a teapot, for instance

Do not try this at home.

At least not in your home

 

[MailDeadDrop]

You can pour fire ants from a teapot, for instance

Do not try this at home.

At least not in your home

Oh sure, now you tell me...
You will have riches beyond your wildest dreams if you can create a pest that feeds on fire ants and can out-reproduce them.

 

[glutto]

They also make graveyards of dead ants, too, at least in confined quarters like little ant farms.

 

[RadioRanger317]

Sensing when sand grains are loose and when they're stuck tight (under load).
I wonder if studies have been done to see if ants can detect electrostatic fields.
All those bristley hairs, and natural piezo effect is so small...

 

[Chuckstar]

They don’t understand how the algorithm is spread between ants? Don’t we have a pretty good understanding of the concept of emergence, these days?

 

[Nora Lenderbee]

You can pour fire ants from a teapot, for instance

Do not try this at home.

At least not in your home

Oh sure, now you tell me...
You will have riches beyond your wildest dreams if you can create a pest that feeds on fire ants and can out-reproduce them.

If it's a benign pest that doesn't screw up more than it fixes. Ecological history has many stories of pests brought in to control other pests and the end result was very bad.

 

[mhalpern]

You can pour fire ants from a teapot, for instance

Do not try this at home.

At least not in your home

Oh sure, now you tell me...
You will have riches beyond your wildest dreams if you can create a pest that feeds on fire ants and can out-reproduce them.

If it's a benign pest that doesn't screw up more than it fixes. Ecological history has many stories of pests brought in to control other pests and the end result was very bad.

i prefer the more artistic form of fire ant management... pouring lead into the colony, let it cool, and dig it out

 

[lazarus0000]

Amazing critters. I think the scariest thing I've ever seen in person is a colony fjording an inlet to a pond I was fishing. Inlet was easily 30 feet in width and they were crossing it without a bit of trouble. That animals with barely a brain can engage in behavior like that was both awe inspiring and scary as hell.

Imagine what humans could do if we could just come together in much the same way....?

 

[Veritas super omens]

You can pour fire ants from a teapot, for instance

Do not try this at home.

At least not in your home

But if you are the downstairs renter (played by Michael Keaton) in the movei Pacific Heights*.....




* I know it was cockroaches, but fire ants would have been even MORE dastardly

 

[Veritas super omens]

You can pour fire ants from a teapot, for instance

Do not try this at home.

At least not in your home

Oh sure, now you tell me...
You will have riches beyond your wildest dreams if you can create a pest that feeds on fire ants and can out-reproduce them.

Or alternatively, you could be the victim eaten by their subject in a cautionary tale about a person's misguided attempt to turn nature into profit....

 

[Veritas super omens]

mhalpern wrote:
"i prefer the more artistic form of fire ant management... pouring lead into the colony, let it cool, and dig it out"



I watched a documentary where a researcher did that with cement in a pampas grass harvester ant colony in Argentina. It was like 14 feet tall when excavated, and modeling showed that the way the chambers were arranged it functioned as a passive cooling chimney for the colony.

 

[Woolfe]

Fascinating stuff. Good article, thanks Ars!

 

[numerobis]

You can pour fire ants from a teapot, for instance

Do not try this at home.

At least not in your home

Oh sure, now you tell me...
You will have riches beyond your wildest dreams if you can create a pest that feeds on fire ants and can out-reproduce them.

If it's a benign pest that doesn't screw up more than it fixes. Ecological history has many stories of pests brought in to control other pests and the end result was very bad.

As long as you live somewhere cold the gorillas freeze to death in winter so you're fine.

 

[numerobis]

They don’t understand how the algorithm is spread between ants? Don’t we have a pretty good understanding of the concept of emergence, these days?

We don't have that great an understanding of how emergence emerges.

 

[Veritas super omens]

They don’t understand how the algorithm is spread between ants? Don’t we have a pretty good understanding of the concept of emergence, these days?

We don't have that great an understanding of how emergence emerges.

It emerges from quantum subspace... I saw it on a documentary about species 8472.....

 

[Chuckstar]

They don’t understand how the algorithm is spread between ants? Don’t we have a pretty good understanding of the concept of emergence, these days?

We don't have that great an understanding of how emergence emerges.

Sure we do. Emergence is the apparently complex behavior that results when individual agents act according to their individual rules. There's really nothing else to understand about it.

Keep in mind the quote: "How that behavioral program is spread across the tiny brains of all these ants is a wonder of the natural world we have no explanation for." We know exactly the explanation. Each ant acts according to a set of rules encoded in their genome, and the researcher who wrote that had just finished describing a number of elements in those rules. What else is there to understand about emergence?

 

[numerobis]

They don’t understand how the algorithm is spread between ants? Don’t we have a pretty good understanding of the concept of emergence, these days?

We don't have that great an understanding of how emergence emerges.

Sure we do. Emergence is the apparently complex behavior that results when individual agents act according to their individual rules. There's really nothing else to understand about it.

Keep in mind the quote: "How that behavioral program is spread across the tiny brains of all these ants is a wonder of the natural world we have no explanation for." We know exactly the explanation. Each ant acts according to a set of rules encoded in their genome, and the researcher who wrote that had just finished describing a number of elements in those rules. What else is there to understand about emergence?

How did those simple rules come up is the main question.

 

[Chuckstar]

They don’t understand how the algorithm is spread between ants? Don’t we have a pretty good understanding of the concept of emergence, these days?

We don't have that great an understanding of how emergence emerges.

Sure we do. Emergence is the apparently complex behavior that results when individual agents act according to their individual rules. There's really nothing else to understand about it.

Keep in mind the quote: "How that behavioral program is spread across the tiny brains of all these ants is a wonder of the natural world we have no explanation for." We know exactly the explanation. Each ant acts according to a set of rules encoded in their genome, and the researcher who wrote that had just finished describing a number of elements in those rules. What else is there to understand about emergence?

How did those simple rules come up is the main question.

It's called "evolution". And is also irrelevant to the quote I was responding to.

 

[Green RT]

Amazing critters. I think the scariest thing I've ever seen in person is a colony fjording an inlet to a pond I was fishing. Inlet was easily 30 feet in width and they were crossing it without a bit of trouble. That animals with barely a brain can engage in behavior like that was both awe inspiring and scary as hell.

Imagine what humans could do if we could just come together in much the same way....?

My guess is that humans are too smart to act in the socially sacrificial way that ants do. Valuing individual lives often conflicts with achieving the aims of a group.

 

[cynyc2]

You can pour fire ants from a teapot, for instance

Do not try this at home.

At least not in your home

Oh sure, now you tell me...
You will have riches beyond your wildest dreams if you can create a pest that feeds on fire ants and can out-reproduce them.

Have you tried horned toads? I had a nasty harvester ant problem, until a bunch of horned toads moved in - under my house (manufactured home, no wheels). Then I started finding horned toad poo! clumps of nothing but dead ant carcases.

I made sure that if the kids played with the toads (they are quite gentle), to put them away when they were done, to keep the ants in control.

 

[jnigrine]

You can pour fire ants from a teapot, for instance

Do not try this at home.

April fool!

 

[Veritas super omens]

I'm a little teapot
short and stout
fill me up with fire ants
you silly lout
make them angry
then pour them out

 

[Elektriktoad]

Amazing critters. I think the scariest thing I've ever seen in person is a colony fjording an inlet to a pond I was fishing. Inlet was easily 30 feet in width and they were crossing it without a bit of trouble. That animals with barely a brain can engage in behavior like that was both awe inspiring and scary as hell.

Imagine what humans could do if we could just come together in much the same way....?

My guess is that humans are too smart to act in the socially sacrificial way that ants do. Valuing individual lives often conflicts with achieving the aims of a group.

The neat thing about ants is that they achieve the aims of the group while also each being incredibly selfish. Through a quirk of Hymenopteran genetics, ants (and bees/wasps) are more related to their sisters (3/4 relatedness) than they would be to their own children (1/2).

This means that workers can further more of their genes by promoting survival and fitness of their sister queens that go and start new nests. All the workers are equally invested in the new brood of queens, and more than a parent’s genetic investment.

I would surmise that if human children had thousands of adults highly genetically invested in them, we’d see this sort of colony structure too.

 

[Nora Lenderbee]

You can pour fire ants from a teapot, for instance

Do not try this at home.

At least not in your home

Oh sure, now you tell me...
You will have riches beyond your wildest dreams if you can create a pest that feeds on fire ants and can out-reproduce them.

This somewhat dated (2009) but excellent advertisement for Ortho Orthene fire ant killer poison must be watched. You will get a chuckle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhXl9_K_9qE

 

[david newall]

You can pour fire ants from a teapot, for instance

Do not try this at home.

At least not in your home

Oh sure, now you tell me...
You will have riches beyond your wildest dreams if you can create a pest that feeds on fire ants and can out-reproduce them.

You will have a pest worse than your greatest fears if you create one that feeds on fire ants and out-produces the. Do not try on your home planet.

 

[matheme]

They don’t understand how the algorithm is spread between ants? Don’t we have a pretty good understanding of the concept of emergence, these days?

We don't have that great an understanding of how emergence emerges.

Sure we do. Emergence is the apparently complex behavior that results when individual agents act according to their individual rules. There's really nothing else to understand about it.

Keep in mind the quote: "How that behavioral program is spread across the tiny brains of all these ants is a wonder of the natural world we have no explanation for." We know exactly the explanation. Each ant acts according to a set of rules encoded in their genome, and the researcher who wrote that had just finished describing a number of elements in those rules. What else is there to understand about emergence?

We can determine that there are rules, what they are, and that they are passed down the ant-generations, but the code in which these are written in the genome is completely unclear. We know the three-letter code for making amino-acids from DNA-RNA, and understand some of the regulatory code making sure the proper proteins are expressed in the proper time and place in the organism, but we don't even know what kind of code we should be looking for that could encode these kind of ant-rules. The same goes for inborn instincts, or the eerily precise body-patterning that makes us look exactly as we are (esp. evident in identical twins). Luckily, ~95% of the human genome does not encode for proteins and other stuff we understand, so there is plenty of room for exploration.

 

[Tsa Szymborska]

Amazing critters. I think the scariest thing I've ever seen in person is a colony fjording an inlet to a pond I was fishing. Inlet was easily 30 feet in width and they were crossing it without a bit of trouble. That animals with barely a brain can engage in behavior like that was both awe inspiring and scary as hell.

Imagine what humans could do if we could just come together in much the same way....?

We can go to the moon, build cities and live in them without total war breaking out, and we would have no serious climate change if we had the will to do something about it when the report by the Club of Rome came out.

 

[jhk1957]

You can pour fire ants from a teapot, for instance

Do not try this at home.

At least not in your home

Oh sure, now you tell me...
You will have riches beyond your wildest dreams if you can create a pest that feeds on fire ants and can out-reproduce them.

Be careful what you wish for....

 

[malor]

You can pour fire ants from a teapot, for instance

Do not try this at home.

At least not in your home

Correct. Do not try this in my home.

 

[JaneDoe]

We didn't interview any ants to ask if they know what they're doing, but ...

Comment from reviewer 1: The author should work on that to make the article solid.

 

[ssener2001]

They don’t understand how the algorithm is spread between ants? Don’t we have a pretty good understanding of the concept of emergence, these days?

We don't have that great an understanding of how emergence emerges.

Sure we do. Emergence is the apparently complex behavior that results when individual agents act according to their individual rules. There's really nothing else to understand about it.

Keep in mind the quote: "How that behavioral program is spread across the tiny brains of all these ants is a wonder of the natural world we have no explanation for." We know exactly the explanation. Each ant acts according to a set of rules encoded in their genome, and the researcher who wrote that had just finished describing a number of elements in those rules. What else is there to understand about emergence?

How did those simple rules come up is the main question.

It's called "evolution". And is also irrelevant to the quote I was responding to.

Evolution does not know programming or ants or nests or universe.
With what can you explain this wise percipient activity ?
Deaf nature? Blind force? Senseless chance. Can you explain it through impotent lifeless causes?

 

[llanitedave]

They don’t understand how the algorithm is spread between ants? Don’t we have a pretty good understanding of the concept of emergence, these days?

We don't have that great an understanding of how emergence emerges.

Sure we do. Emergence is the apparently complex behavior that results when individual agents act according to their individual rules. There's really nothing else to understand about it.

Keep in mind the quote: "How that behavioral program is spread across the tiny brains of all these ants is a wonder of the natural world we have no explanation for." We know exactly the explanation. Each ant acts according to a set of rules encoded in their genome, and the researcher who wrote that had just finished describing a number of elements in those rules. What else is there to understand about emergence?

How did those simple rules come up is the main question.

It's called "evolution". And is also irrelevant to the quote I was responding to.

Evolution does not know programming or ants or nests or universe.
With what can you explain this wise percipient activity ?
Deaf nature? Blind force? Senseless chance. Can you explain it through impotent lifeless causes?

Evolution doesn't have to know it in order to do it.

 

[cerberusTI]

You can pour fire ants from a teapot, for instance

Do not try this at home.

At least not in your home

Oh sure, now you tell me...
You will have riches beyond your wildest dreams if you can create a pest that feeds on fire ants and can out-reproduce them.

Fire ants? Yeah, my zombie wasps eat those too.

How many should I put you down for?

 

[laptop]

Excellent article Jennifer. If there is more on this subject in the future I will be super happy to read it.

Not 100% on topic, but I recently read an excellent book on ants and their behaviour, including tunneling and nest building behaviours:

Empire of Ants by Susanne Foitzik and Olaf Fritsche. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/560 ... re-of-ants

 

[Chuckstar]

They don’t understand how the algorithm is spread between ants? Don’t we have a pretty good understanding of the concept of emergence, these days?

We don't have that great an understanding of how emergence emerges.

Sure we do. Emergence is the apparently complex behavior that results when individual agents act according to their individual rules. There's really nothing else to understand about it.

Keep in mind the quote: "How that behavioral program is spread across the tiny brains of all these ants is a wonder of the natural world we have no explanation for." We know exactly the explanation. Each ant acts according to a set of rules encoded in their genome, and the researcher who wrote that had just finished describing a number of elements in those rules. What else is there to understand about emergence?

We can determine that there are rules, what they are, and that they are passed down the ant-generations, but the code in which these are written in the genome is completely unclear. We know the three-letter code for making amino-acids from DNA-RNA, and understand some of the regulatory code making sure the proper proteins are expressed in the proper time and place in the organism, but we don't even know what kind of code we should be looking for that could encode these kind of ant-rules. The same goes for inborn instincts, or the eerily precise body-patterning that makes us look exactly as we are (esp. evident in identical twins). Luckily, ~95% of the human genome does not encode for proteins and other stuff we understand, so there is plenty of room for exploration.

Sure. But that is irrelevant to the comment, as that is true for the direct behaviors of individuals. You don’t need to understand any of that to get from those individual behaviors to the emergent behavior of the group.