Intersting Article on Ants

[Fuhzy]

Impressive...

http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_te...ce=rss_science


Quote:

"Ants not only work hard and are prepared to lay down their lives for their fellow ants, they also take bigger risks for the good of the colony as they get older – and they can even assess how much time they have left in life. Dawid Moron and his colleagues at Jagiellonian University in Poland have carried out a set of laboratory experiments showing that ants have the ability to gauge the end of their lifespan and to use their assessment of imminent mortality to take bigger risks with their ageing lives.
It is well established that worker ants tend to take greater risks as they get older. Scientists have shown that this behavioural trait benefits the colony because certain risky activities, such as foraging far from the nest, are best done by ants coming to the end of their useful lives – it doesn't pay to put young workers in high-risk jobs."

[tipsy]

hmmmm... i think the ants that are invading my house must be old, cause damn, theyre ballzy. (and everywhere)

[antman]

Ants rock. Now I have more reason to be fascinated by them.

[angelamc]

Makes me want to get an ant farm and experiment with the little guys. But I guess that would not be vegan...

[harpy]

Ants in a colony are genetically identical aren't they? So from a "selfish gene" point of view it makes sense for an old one to sacrifice itself for a young one. Doesn't necessarily apply to the rest of us though

[angelamc]

Ants in a colony are genetically identical

Ants are clones??!!

[ClawsyWP]

aw wow

i love ants

we have them in our flat and i lvoe watching them. But they are a bit annoying because i really hate to kill them so i have to pick them outa the bath and the sink and check the loo roll even. it takes ages.

and the kitchen they get into the microwave so now i have to check that before using it.

i watch them as i have a bath, they are so brave eh and yeh really industrious and hard workers.

we are not grubby and lean away the food, but they seem to be everywhere here.

I would love an ant farm but yeh wouldnt be vegan.

[Mahk]

ClawsyWP, I see you have uninvited "free range" ants, like me.

Am I the only one that thinks the explanation that the older ants are consciously being altruistic for the benefit of the colony is preposterous? Sure I can believe that as they age they tend to take more risks. This makes perfect sense from an evolutionary point of view. The other rival colonies that had that genetically dictated behavior reversed (the younger ones took more risks) died off. This was merely a random genetic mutation that flourished because it makes sense, not because the older ants "think" to themselves, "Gee, ya know, I notice I'm having more arthritis in my exoskeleton these days. I bet that must mean I'm coming close to the end of my life, so I think I'll do my best for the rest of the colony and take more risks when I go out foraging today". Yeah, right! The carbon dioxide age accelerated ones taking risks earlier may just be that the behavior is hormonally controlled and whenever the ants hit "menopause" (or whatever) the risk behavior hormone is released.

Considering humans hardly have a sense of their own age and how near the end they are without the use of mirrors, photographs of themselves, the testimony of others, and calendars, I find it hard to believe that an animal with a brain the size of the period at the end of this sentence, does.

This scientist is suffering from anthropomorphism. He's also a Moron, literally.

[Fuhzy]

I think the idea is that there is something programmed into an ant (in the DNA or somewhere) that encourages more foraging as the ant ages. Obviously the ant doesn't have a thought process similar to ours, and I don't think the scientist was trying to say that...

[angelamc]

Yeah, Maybe ants just get bolder as they get older. If they haven't died yet they're probably more comfortable about taking risks because they're confident, maybe? Does that make sense?

[Mahk]

Obviously the ant doesn't have a thought process similar to ours, and I don't think the scientist was trying to say that...

Perhaps I'm wrong to take these quotes literally, but clearly at face value the implication is that the ants "know" or "can assess" how much time they have left to live:

"Ants not only work hard and are prepared to lay down their lives for their fellow ants, they also take bigger risks for the good of the colony as they get older – and they can even assess how much time they have left in life." [emphasis mine]

Baloney!

"Dawid Moron and his colleagues at Jagiellonian University in Poland have carried out a set of laboratory experiments showing that ants have the ability to gauge the end of their lifespan and to use their assessment of imminent mortality to take bigger risks with their ageing lives."

"The technique of shortening life expectancy is also gradual and predictable – and one which the ant should be able to exploit to estimate how much time it has left before dying."

"'This implies that ant workers adjust their threshold for engaging in risk foraging according to their life expectancy,' Dr Moron said."

"...they also have the ability to make careful calculations of just how much risk they should take based on their current life expectancy."

"...there is every reason to suspect that the same ability to assess life expectancy occurs in other kinds of ants that live in social colonies with caste-based hierarchies."

I beg to differ, Dr. Moron, I argue there's no "assessing" going on here, cognitive or otherwise, at all. Older ants behave differently in regards to taking risks. End of story. It's simply a matter of age. There's no evidence that this change in behavior can be attributed to a supposed "sense of life expectancy" be it instinctual, cognitive, or otherwise. That's a load of bull. All the test proved is that carbon dioxide age accelerated ants also behave differently in regards to risk taking.

Here's an analogy with humans: Say you discover that men who smoke not only die sooner but also start to lose their hair sooner than men that don't smoke. Does that prove that men have an inherent "life expectancy" sensing mechanism? No.

[harpy]

As Fuhzy suggested, I think that's probably intended as a description of behaviour that's instinctive, i.e. genetically programmed into the ants. People talk about computer programs assessing and calculating things, after all, without any suggestion of conscious processes.

I agree it could have been better put though.

[Mahk]

Good point. I've modified my response to show that it's not just whether the "assessment" is cognitive or not that bothers me, though, regarding his conclusions.

[harpy]

Well, I suppose the take-home point is that age determines behaviour. Probably futile to speculate about the way the ants feel when they act in this way? Although I've seen it suggested that a colony of ants has a kind of collective intelligence or even consciousness, which is an interesting idea I think.