Comment by atentaten | Hacker News Reader

Comment by atentaten | Hacker News Reader

There needs to be some clarifying questions. I'm basing these questions on the premise that the trapped ants ate the corpses of incoming worker ants without killing them first.

(1) How did the incoming worker ants come to be in the bunker? Based on the premise, they fell into the bunker already dead. If that's the case and if the ants were not reproducing, unless they have a relatively long lifespan, (2) shouldn't they die out overtime regardless of how many corpses fell into the bunker?

(3) Why couldn't the trap ants make it across the ceiling into the ventilation pipe--are some ants unable to crawl upside down or did the texture of the ceiling impede them?

If the premise is incorrect and the ants have a short lifespan, it's reasonable to think that the "trapped" ants are just an accumulation of worker ants that kept falling into the bunker.

No, it doesn't say they were dead when they fell into the bunker. In fact, the contrary.

From the abstract:

> Here we show that the ‘colony’ in the bunker survived and grew thanks to an influx of workers from the source nest above the bunker

And the introduction:

> Ants which had dropped through the pipe to the bunker were not able to reach the outlet, located in the ceiling, to return to the mother nest.

And regarding your question about being able to crawl across the ceiling, probably not enough texture to grip. After all, the article indicates that there was question about whether they would even be able to crawl up the ventilation pipe:

> the only way to free the ants from the bunker would be to enable their spontaneous return migration to the maternal nest through the ventilation pipe – assuming that the rusty pipe interior is coarse enough for that

And to your point

> it's reasonable to think that the "trapped" ants are just an accumulation of worker ants that kept falling into the bunker.

Yes, and that is the premise of the study. However, a million ants didn't fall down all at once (or in a very short period), so however long they were down there they had to adapt to survive - which is what the study is about.

Thanks.

I suspect that it's like a wasp trap. In theory they could walk out if they could find the exit, but the exit is in a spot they aren't looking.

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