this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Today I Learned

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[–] DrRatso@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (13 children)

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.

[–] lol3droflxp@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (12 children)

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.

[–] livus@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

@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.

[–] lol3droflxp@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

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.

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