Indulging my fascination with ants
15th November 2008
by gordo
Ever since I was about 6, I’ve been fascinated with ants. By the time I was 8, I was imparting all sorts of ant-related knowledge to my friends (”Those small ones aren’t ‘baby ants’. Baby ants pupate like butterflys. And they don’t have lungs. And their skeletons are on the outside. And all those ants you see are girls. And the queen doesn’t give orders, each ant is always doing just what she wants to do.”). None of them believed a word of it.
But the more I learned, the more interested I became. The variation of ants is virtually endless. Amazon ants enslave other species of ants. Driver ants swarm from nests that number in the millions, and kill every animal in the vicinity, including elephants. Farmer ants raise aphids inside their colonies and feed off of the honeydew that the aphids secrete.
Ants have evolved a near-perfect evolutionary strategy, one that ensures that beneficial mutations will be spread through an entire local population in just two generations. Most ant colonies function as a single meta-organism, in which ants play the same role as cells do in ordinary organisms. And like cells, individual ants within a colony become highly specialized.
The more you learn about ants, the more you want to know. My interest in them has even prompted me to develop an extended metaphor for American society that centers largely on ants. I like ants so much that I’ve gone out and found a short videos about an unusual variety for you to enjoy:
And when you’re done viewing that, there’s an even better video for you right here.
November 15th, 2008 at 8:28 am
So, G, what do you think of E. O. Wilson’s work?
November 15th, 2008 at 9:13 am
well I did try to find ebooks about ants. Nobody has it online. …tooo bad. Maybe you should pick up different hobby. drug and explosive seems to be popular online. (on serious note. there are tons of engineering and science book. I am amazed. )
http://rapidlibrary.com/index.php?q=ants+ebook+collection&filetype=0
November 15th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Squashed–
Ants are so under-appreciated. Did you know that they have the highest brain-to-mass ratio of any animal? They don’t have enough brain mass to do much in the way of thinking, but their relatively large brains allow them to function as though they were all fully autonomous robots. One of these days, we’ll be capable of using ants as a model to develop self-replicating colonies of robots that could, in theory, adapt to virtually any conditions. Maybe you could even send robot colonies to other star systems to gather and retrieve data and materials for us to use.
Timothy Shortell, Ph.D.–
I’m a big fan of Wilson’s. Thanks to him, we probably know as much about leafcutter ants as we do about any other species. He reminds us that if we ever achieve Monsanto’s dream of eradicating the earth of “pests”, we will also succeed in eradicating ourselves:
To a large extent, that fragile shell that makes life sustainable depends on ants and other “vermin”. There isn’t a single rain forest on Earth that could survive the loss of its ants. One of these days, we’ll have to devote at least as much energy and thought to the task of sustaining “weeds”, fungi, and insects in the wild as we do to eradicating them from our farms.
November 15th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Unfortunately insect operating temperature is pretty high, outer space would be expensive, with heaters and all. (You can scratch Mars, too cold.)
Tho’ personally, it would be an interesting experiment to combine:
some sort of bacteria + ants, then put them in plastic bubble on mars (higher pressure, higher temp. Then see if ant can help themselves moving around things underground and dig holes.)
The ant functions as transporter and creator of environment for the bacteria to thrive. The bacteria produces various complex nutrient that doesn’t exist naturally on mars.
If the ant can pick up skill building atmospherically sealed pressure chamber underground. We put the whole a ball of air pump and let them dig underground.
voila… Mars termite investation.
November 15th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Squashed–
I meant building robots that organize themselves like an ant colony, not sending actual insects into space. The idea is that if the robot colony could be initially established anywhere on a planet, it could spawn other colonies that would be adapted to other regions on the planet. Theoretically, you could make extra-terrestrial colonies that could colonize other planets and even other star systems, perpetuating themselves with materials from the other worlds.
The danger, of course, is that the robot colonies would encounter alien life and come into conflict. They could wipe out the alien life, or establish themselves as a threat to an alien intelligence that might attack us out of self-defense.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
What’s the point?
I thought what’s so great about ant is “self reproducing” ability. You send a bunch of them and they can cover the entire continent.
If you send a robot, even a relatively large one that is the size of a truck, it will still be a solitary robot. With ant brain.
And at the rate microprocessor chip is going, we can cram a lot of advance robot behavior on small space, not to mention simply transmit new program.
btw,
I think there is an article somewhere about “swarm” behavior, how now it can be simulated. (eg. a few simple automaton with very simple program that can have complex societal behavior)
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http://talk.bmc.com/blogs/blog-vanhook/herb-vanhook/swarmtheory
AI came in fits and starts, and some of it has proven useful when applied to real-world problems. AI has not have that stellar a success rate in the management of IT systems (who remembers Neugents from Computer Associates?).
What got me thinking about this is an article in the July 2007 National Geographic by Peter Miller titled “Swarm Theory.” In the article, Deborah Gordon, a biologist at Stanford University says “Ants aren’t smart, ant colonies are.” One implication is that while building AI software systems to do things that come naturally to human 3-year olds is a struggle, it is possible to build systems that are at least as smart as an ant. Collections of these “software ants” can then do useful things together.
Simple creatures following simple rules, each acting on local information, drives “swarm intelligence.” (There’s a nod to James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds here.) In the article, Miller lists a number of amazing applications of this technique - both in the animal/insect world and in the technology world. One example is telephone companies using “virtual pheromone deposits” in switches to indicate best paths for call setup and transmission. I can envision software using these methods in grid and datacenter computing, performance balancing, etc. Check out the article and especially the great photos.
November 15th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Dude, you send a whole colony of robots, including robots capable of manufacturing more robots using available materials. Then they send out new colonies of robots that are adapted to other areas of the planet.
And yes, the whole point it to use swarm intelligence, because there wouldn’t be any way of effectively communicating with our robots once we send them out.
November 16th, 2008 at 3:29 am
If ants and squirrels were as large as tigers God help us all…
November 16th, 2008 at 4:53 am
I hate to be pedantic, but I can’t help it when the subject is ants.
If ants were the size of tigers, they wouldn’t be able to survive. They’re cold blooded, and so their exoskeletons and large mass/surface area ratio would cause them to overheat and die. Even if that weren’t a problem, they don’t have lungs and have to breathe through holes in their sides called spiracles. That’s fine for a tiny creature like an ant, but it can’t provide nearly enough oxygen for a creature the size of a tiger. Also, if ants managed to survive, they would sink into all but the most compacted of soils, because they would weigh twice as much as a tiger and have relatively small feet.
On the other hand, ants the size of tigers would be considerably smarter than humans, and would probably figure out a way to enslave us.
November 16th, 2008 at 8:49 am
but but but….
we don’t have a system of “robot making robot”, we have to send robot to make robot factory. And the best current technology to make part from martian soil is “sintering”… and you gonna need nuclear power to heat the soil powder.
what’s worst, we don’t have rocket technology in the foreseeable future that is able to transport robot+tools to make robot factory. the better alternative in that scenario is to send human + tool factory.
With that much research technology going in….
we might as well researching how to create genetically altered ants that can be paired with fungus or bacteria to colonize a planet.
November 16th, 2008 at 9:04 am
# bedrocktruth Says:
November 16th, 2008 at 3:29 am
If ants and squirrels were as large as tigers God help us all…
you can’t. There is a reason insects body can only go as big as around 2 inches.
1. the exoskeleton biomechanics dictate it need to be very rigid and turning into very chumbersome system. Think what happens to “crab”. The exoskeleton is very rigid to support all the weight. (Compared this to squishy wasp/ant/bee for eg.)
2. because of rigid exoskeleton (plus the volume size of larger animal) you can’t use simple diffusion as breathing system. The exoskeleton can’t move flexibly/pulsate, on top of that the animal’s volume size would need specialized gas exchange and pump (lung + heart system of some sort)
It would be interesting what happen insect has “metallic” skeleton structure. … but the amount of energy to shape metal vs protein based skeleton is gigantic.
aluminum melts at ~900C
Iron melts at ~1500C
stainless steel ~1600C
Titanium ~1700C
you gonna need lots of energy to cast metals. This compared to biological system reactions that happens in aqueous solution at room temperature. (20-30C)
Come to think of it, I wonder why nobody has created a 3D printer that med out of same system as bone?
November 16th, 2008 at 9:25 am
If ants and squirrels were as large as tigers, I doubt we would be here now.
Weren’t insects larger during the carboniferous period, when oxygen content in the atmosphere was greater?
November 16th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Precisely Tommy; at least during the first 232,000 years, 4 months and 26 days, before gwobal warming set in and oxygen levels began to deplete to the level that the lower forms of life-ants, crabs, moonbats and such-were deprived of enough oxygen, particularly to the brain, to develop further.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Tommy–
They were bigger, but they never got to be as big as tigers. There have been dragonfly fossils as with 30 inch wingspans, for example, but there’s no way that a cold-blooded creature with an exoskeleton could grow much bigger than that, because of the overheating problem.
November 16th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
ok. I was wondering what sort of minerals and materials are available on Mars…
They have silica (glass/sand) So glass construction is possible. Which is good, we know a lot about making glass. Send nuke reactor or bunch of solar panel one can set up a glass furnace.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9388173
The soil analyses show similarity to those determined by the Viking missions. The analyzed rocks were partially covered by dust but otherwise compositionally similar to each other. They are unexpectedly high in silica and potassium, but low in magnesium compared to martian soils and martian meteorites.
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http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060926074156AAqpySW
contracting when they dry. Silicate minerals, oxides (mostly iron), and some calcium carbonate were also found.
Mars soil composition has 5-14 % iron oxide. It is rich in iron, covered with rust thus making it red. The most prevalent elements in the soil patch were silicon and iron. It also found significant levels of chlorine and sulfur.Mineral called olivine was also found.
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Hey, they might be able to make cement on Mars. Don’t forget to bring a lot of water from earth.. heh heh.. oh and a cement factory would be handy.
August 14th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
I to have thought of this, we can throw in enough human dna to ensure we survive in some form no matter what. But to make this work the ants have to be able to survive anything, I mean anything. So I also know of species on earth that get oxygen and nutrients for Sulfur. What you need is an ant that can survive on sulfur and is probably bred from something like a honey ant so it can store liquid sulfur. The primary goal is an ant that can survive on meteors if need be.
August 15th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Well ant colony-based optimization is just one thing
They are a valid and interesting part of swarm intelligence for sure but (thus far) the ultimate in smart systems made up of dumb parts is … well, in a person’s head
I see no reason to limit ourselves to synthetic ants, useful as they might be
September 9th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
also I like how Gordo tacitly admits that humans could be improved upon substantially in the OP
ants and their societies are a great lead-in for getting a good sense of what nano-bio-cogno-info (NBIC) converging technologies are all about but he has to overcome a lot of his liberal humanist biases to get a fuller picture
http://futurismic.com/2009/05/21/neuroscience-soldiers/
that’s pretty cool bro I have a feeling battle stress would induce some soldiers to become dependent on their T-600 pills