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little bastards move them everywhere. and farm a wide range of aphids and scale bugs.
Leaf cutter ant farm fungus like we farm veggies too.
Kinda makes you rethink how we typically define ‘society’.
Like it’s far more fundamental than we think, and we very narrowly define it by too complex criteria. And we’re too invested in making sure that definition stays narrow enough that we can justify harming others.
(Sorry, I’d normally put that in a slightly more cheerful way, but I’m just so tired.)
Humans don’t just wake up one day and start farming fungi their whole lives and never stop or reproduce because something in their brain constantly tells them to. There’s some profound difference between ant “society” and human society.
I mean…
Most people will just do one specialised set of tasks for their whole lives. And reproduction definitely has strong physiological drives, there is a reason for phrases such as “thinking with his dick”.
An ant society is in fact very profound in many ways, they are eusocial, which means that any single individual truly works for the good of everyone and is willing to give up their lives without hesitation to protect the colony. Such level of cooperation is probably unfathomable in humans.
Yes, but humans will almost never actually focus 100% on one task. Almost everyone needs some hobby/creative expression to keep up their mental health. Humans do these tasks to be able to survive, not because they can’t think of anything else. The complexity of human society is unrivalled by any other social species we know of.
Each ant (in the more modern species at least) works for the ability of the queen(s) to reproduce. This is governed by instinct, no ant will sit down and think about its contribution to ant society. This also makes a colony less of a society and more like an organism. The ants are acting like cells of a body, working only towards the goal of survival and reproduction of the whole while never achieving the latter for themselves.
A human society on the other hand is the interplay of social organisms that choose to cooperate with certain goals in mind and a certain degree of interdependence. The individuals will sometimes sacrifice themselves for society but most will keep their own reproduction (= family) as their main priority. There are of course a lot of parallels and similarities , however the human capacity for individual agency and choice of cooperation is the difference that makes human society so unique.
This is baseless conjecture, not fact.
Youre misunderstanding biology's decision to not impose cognitive assumptions where they cant be proven for a lack of cognition at all.
Bees, a close (relatively) relative of the ant are known to not only play, but also attempt to sneakily reproduce and hide their offspring among the queens eggs. The colony, in turn, murders any bees caught doing so. Clearly more than the simple robotic instinct you wish to imply, and entirely possible for ants to also be capable of. Its just yet to be observed, recorded, and published.
Do not mistake an inability to test and confirm for a lack of capacity.
I know that they do this. The primitive ant species fight for the queen position all the time. However, in the more modern ant species this behaviour is rare or doesn’t really exist as far as we know. In bees it is also not the norm.
And there still are no cognitive abilities of any insect that have been shown to come close to those of somewhat intelligent vertebrates. I don’t think that insects are robots, however their behavioural repertoire is very limited in comparison to birds for example let alone humans.
You sound like someone who flunked AP biology
Ok, any arguments to back that up?
I already gave them to you.
There is no "primitive" or "modern" species. Ant, or otherwise. Thats not a thing, biologically speaking, for extant species.
And, again, lacking cognitive testing is not proof of lack of cognition. Even if we do ignore the examples of play, a behavior that requires developed thinking.
Youre making up blind assumptions based on your belief that insects are below humans. Its a false assumption, one with no facts to support it, and it flies in the face of the actual facts.
I used primitive and modern as a way to refer to more basal or derived traits in ant colonies that I hoped would be more accessible. This is commonly used in literature although a bit dated.
Where did I say ants don’t have cognition? You just assumed this. Also, there are no examples of playing behaviour in ant species so far. Only the bumblebee paper. If you know of any publications on this topic that I don’t know about, please feel free to share. Maybe they do, still doesn’t really change much.
Show me an insect manufacturing or using tools. Or one learning new techniques by watching others, or one teaching its offspring. These are some of the complex cognitive traits found in mammals and birds that have not been shown for insects as far as I know.
Believe me when I tell you that I have a profound interest and appreciation for insects, enough to shape career and education choices around them. But claiming that insects are cognitively even remotely on the same level as humans is not supported anywhere and a bit of a silly hill to die on.
you used it incorrectly, both originally and now.
you heavily implied this, and are doing so again here. Again, lack of research is not proof of null.
leafcutter ants teach each other the neccessary steps for fungal feeding. They do not naturally know how to prepare the leaves. As far as you know is not a far distance, and is not a basis for dismissing an entire branch of the animal kingdom as lesser.
The silly hill to die on is you acting like your lack of knowledge is equivalent to fact. It spits in the face of scientific research.
I didn’t. I meant it, to use another terminology, as ancestral/derived traits. Maybe you get that.
I didn’t, also you can’t prove absence of something as you should know.
Do you actually believe ants have closely similar cognitive abilities to humans? Where does this idea come from? At the beginning of the century entomology textbooks actually featured flowcharts to predict insect behaviour. We found out that there is more individuality and adaptability but it’s still not comparable to animals with more complex brains.
You have provided effectively 0 evidence to prove anything as wild as ants forming some elaborate society that would be even nearly as complex as that of humans. Show me this research that you speak of or maybe try to lay off the pop-sci a little.
You dont read well, huh? You literally just agreed with me, and apparently dont even realize it.
Ironic, considering youre the one spouting pop sci.
Guess you’re happy then 👍
@lol3droflxp and @LillyPip the idea that ants all work tirelessly for the colony is just our impression. In the book Ants At Work: How An Insect Society is Organized a scientist who spent 20 years studying them found that a proportion of ants don't work.
It's theorised that colonies grow to the size needed to help in catastrophes which is more than are needed for the everyday running of the colony.
As such, @wildginger is possibly right that the leisure ants could be doing some other thing.
The percentage of workers that actually work is in fact low. This doesn’t change my assumptions. The resting ants have not been shown to pursue individualistic goals, they most likely are just resting.
And, youre aware of the depth of ant cognition.... How? Exactly?
Insect cognition has been a researched topic for some time. Most people tend to reduce them to some robotic form of being, I think that’s not the case as does more modern research. They are capable of learning, bumblebees have been observed displaying playful behaviour (or at least something that resembles it). However all evidence still suggests that their behaviour is very much governed by instincts and can be predicted quite well. There are no known intellectual abilities of insects that come close to those of somewhat intelligent vertebrates. Humans and primates are in another category altogether.
And then there are the naked mole rats...
The only eusocial mammal, what about it?