Lazy ants make themselves useful in unexpected ways | Hacker News Reader

Lazy ants make themselves useful in unexpected ways

phys.org

98 pointsdnetesn27 comments

Fascinating! Ant colony load balancing ^_^

tldr: "... the colony responds to the loss of highly active workers by replacing them with inactive ones"

And all this is happening with a spec of dust sized brain for processing. Meanwhile we need acres of datacenters, satellites in space and lasers on top of car to stay on a road. We have obviously missed something.

If you're now thinking "Why don't we just use insects to control our robots?", you're not alone: http://www.conceptlab.com/roachbot/

That is very interesting. Worthy of it's own spot at the top of HN.

Thanks for posting.

Ants don't care if several hundred colony members accidentally die in the course of completing a task, though, which changes the parameters a lot. Making a car that stays on the road, like, 95% of the time is probably easier than making up the last 5%.

Yeah, but they've got a 99 million year head start on us.

That and the speck of dust is not really doing much work.

Ants have no road to stay on, and a loss of some of them does not affect the colony much.

Human car roads are extremely codified, and a self-driving car that drives as we as an average human would have an extremely poor reputation and no chance to take over driving.

Driving is more about avoiding other big brained humans then any environmental obstacles.

"Structure and function of ant (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) brains" - fascinating reading.

http://eebweb.arizona.edu/faculty/dornhaus/courses/read_ECOL...

You might find Rodney Brooks’ work interesting if you’re not familiar already.

insightful observation. biology is so amazing! but to be fair, the tiny processor in the phone in your pocket is pretty amazing as well.

it seems that electronic circuitry is maybe a 1.5 dimensional structure (mostly linear, even if parallel, with some branching). brains/nervous systems are fully 4 dimensional, which is what allows them to be so powerful in such a small space. it will be fascinating to watch how we close that dimensional gap over the next few decades.

Is this new information?

John Ralston-Saul wrote in The Doubter's Companion in 1994:

"Ants do nothing 71.5 per cent of the time. They are trying to think of what can usefully be done next. And this in spite of their reputation—shared with beavers and BEES — as hard-working role models for the human race.

"Most humans in positions of responsibility work more than 28.5 per cent of the time. It could be argued that, being brighter than ants, we need less time to think. This is a technically correct and reassuring argument. Yet a comparison of the incidence of error among ants versus that among human beings would not come out in our favour. We could counter that, by risking error, human society — or at least human knowledge — has progressed, while that of the ants remains stable. But if we are so bright, then why are we so eager to spend as long as possible on the non-intellectual tasks which hard work represents, while desperately economizing on the time spent thinking? An outside observer, an ant for example, might wonder whether we are afraid of our ability to think and more precisely of the self-doubt which it involves."

Unfortunately no citations relevant to this bit are forthcoming.

Searching backwards - for ants and 71% - finds a reference in sciencemag[1] from 2015. This in turn leads to a paper[2] citing this same number. Mind, both are some two decades after Saul's work was published.

[1] http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/most-worker-ants-are-...

[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00265-015-1958-...

I don't think the author was claiming to be the first to recognize this situation, but as you've noted there is very little published work on it. A lot of science is like this, in that there is an effect or behavior that several people have noted over the years, but no one has sat down and tried to analyze it.

In the case of Ralston-Saul, they speculated that the ants were 'thinking about what to do next'. It is an interesting hypothesis, but untested. In the paper the authors removed 20% of the idle ants and observed they were not replaced. There was also no mention of the activities of the hive slowing down. I think it would be a fair argument that if the ants were 'thinking' then removing ants would slow down their execution. But given that it doesn't, then the hypothesis that they are is probably incorrect.

So we have an observation and a hypothesis in 1994 but no science. Going back and testing those observations helps us learn what is really going on and "know" with more certainly what isn't.

So perhaps it would be better to call it new research on previously speculated about behaviors.

The article starts by saying that "lazy ants" and inactive workers have been observed for a long time. What this work does is confirm one of the hypothesis for the is phenomenon: they are a reserve work force (and not living food stores, as has been suggested)

To confirm your comment, groundbreaking work doesn't go to PLOS.

On the other hand there is value in confirmation.

Maybe part of it is energy efficiency. For humans, being idle doesn't save all that many calories compared to how much we burn anyway to keep our body temperature constant. That's probably different for ants, and thus, when individual ants are not running around without purpose, the whole colony can get by with less food.

Considering the colony as a superorganism, this could be primarily to serve the purpose of redundancy/slack, so that losses or shocks can be continually replaced/responded to, in order to maintain a systemic homeostasis. Though 40% of individuals inactive does seem a large proportion, but perhaps they use little energy.

I think that is a big part of it. There appears to be no consideration that those "hard working" ants are not pure good for the colony. They're burning significant energy. And if that energy is being burned in counter-productive or non-productive ways, they are a net harm to the colony, not a benefit.

I think this can apply widely across the animal kingdom. Only a certain amount of workers can be effective once a level of productivity is achieved. Operating at full capacity might not be possible or evolutionary effective in this environment. Different colonies with more environmental pressures probably have higher engagement/productivity.

Is there a recommended book on ant behavior? Have always been casually interested, ever since reading about the bit of it mentioned in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman.

Ants at Work by Deborah Gordon is a really great book.

"The Ants" by Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson.

So they're not lazy, they're just unemployed.

coughs "between jobs"

So... ant teenagers?

ah anthropomorphizing animals, never disappoints

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