The saga of the cannibal ants in a Soviet nuclear bunker (2019) | Hacker News Reader

The saga of the cannibal ants in a Soviet nuclear bunker (2019)

atlasobscura.com

200 pointsmkotowski49 comments

The reference to the experiment involving an ant colony established by humans on a small Finnish island surviving thanks to a single tree reminded me of another fantastic insect survival story from the Pacific. Via the NPR account of the 2001 discovery:

What's more, for years this place had a secret. At 225 feet above sea level, hanging on the rock surface, there is a small, spindly little bush, and under that bush, a few years ago, two climbers, working in the dark, found something totally improbable hiding in the soil below. How it got there, we still don't know.

Read the story and check out the pictures of the island. It's amazing.

Story: https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/02/24/147367644/s...

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3651551

For another story of how ship-borne rats wreaked havoc on an island’s ecosystem, see SG&SS islands[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Georgia_and_the_South_Sa...

Same story on Gough Island, a few miles to the north:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gough_Island#Invasive_species

At this very moment, there is a scientific sailing expedition:

https://youtu.be/DSulas1b6aw

Part of "Saving species from extinction: The Gough Island Restoration Programme":

https://www.goughisland.com/

You had me at "another fantastic insect survival story" :)

Thanks for sharing!

Well then - I have "another fantastic insect survival story" for ya.

Movile Cave in Romania. "Discovered in 1986, it is notable for its unique groundwater ecosystem abundant in hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide, but low in oxygen. Life in the cave has been separated from the outside for the past 5.5 million years and it is based completely on chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis. The cave is known to contain 57 animal species. Of these, 37 are endemic" ~Wikipedia.

https://geoera.eu/blog/movile-cave-romania/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movile_Cave

Update: Wikipedia says: "In 2018 it was announced that the CEO of the Lord Howe Island Board was had approved a plan to exterminate the black rat population on Lord Howe Island and reintroduce D. australis."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dryococelus_australis

Also: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lord+Howe+Island/

This sounds vaguely like a sci-fi premise where some sympathetic interdimensional researcher places an interdimensional yardstick (the higher dimensions use imperial units) between our isolated, diminished existence and the place where we can bask in the sun and live on honeydew excreted from aphid butts. I know I often wonder if the world we live in is some sort of abandoned Soviet-era nuclear bunker analogue.

I can recommend you to read Hermit and Six-Toes by Victor Pelevin.

Rather, a dark allegory on life under the communism

And, what is to stop the same ant from falling back down the hole again after glimpsing the sun?

or under capitalism.

That would be set in an Amazon fulfillment center. And instead of ants, people.

Basically:

"Ants built a mound near a hole, some started falling down and couldn't get back up; with no food, lower ants had to eat ant corpses; the lower ants also built a mound (with no pupas) and dragged corpses that have been eaten onto a pile; later scientists removed the obstacle so that ants that fall down could get back up".

I'm a bit disappointed that the "soviet nuclear bunker" didn't play a bigger role.

didnt they also install a long 2 by 4

That's what I meant by: "later scientists removed the obstacle so that ants that fall down could get back up";

i.e. scientists "removed the obstacle" by installing the 2/4; apologies if this is worded in an unintuitive way.

There was one ant that fell in while carrying a pupa. That pupa ended up being born in the darkness of this hell hole prison, never knowing any other kind of life. So when the wood 2x4 came down from the sky the other ants were scared and skeptical. But this pupa was not afraid and would be the first to climb it. When he reached the top, he saw the light for the first time and finally knew the world that had been kept from him all his life. When his brothers saw he had succeeded, they followed his scent trail upward, and that’s how the pupa became the new leader of an army brought out from the darkness.

I thought you were going for allegory of the cave, and were a little sad when you didn't.

Which allegory is that? Plato’s cave?

Oh, wow, I didn't realize it was called “the allegory of the cave.”

That's such a bleak view of humanity. I don't think it's quite that bad in general, but I can certainly see the inspiration for it even nowadays.

It doesn’t really fit the situation perfectly.

Let me guess: the ant was Bane and the pupa was Miranda Tate / Talia al Ghul

https://chrisnolan.fandom.com/wiki/Miranda_Tate

The ant idea and communist propaganda or capitalist advertising and the rocky horror show for the bottom dwellers sprung Jack Ma's self-satisfied face seated beside Elon Musk to my mind.

The title made me think of "It Came From Red Alert!". A secret mission in C&C: Red Alert (Counterstrike) that involves fighting giants ants in an abandoned soviet base.

Which is a nod to the game 'It Came From The Desert' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Came_from_the_Desert)... I think I'll have to re-install both :)

Isn't it from It or They Came From Outer Space?

I'm still trying to track down a scifi book I read as a kid where a rich guy buys a huge aquarium that has four ant colonies at the corners. They fight and eventually I think one escapes and kills the owner.

"Sandkings" - it's a very famous short story by George R.R Martin. Also had a tv episode of outer limits based on it

Thanks so much! I've since read other George R.R. Martin scifi (from the same universe, it appears), I really wish he had stuck to that.

Which comes from "It came from the desert" videogame series [0].

I played it as a very young kid (not knowing English! I don't even know how I managed to do anything), and it was fantastic.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Came_from_the_Desert

The ants that fall below don't have queens or reproduce in any way. So it is really a colony? It's just a free-for-all ant-eat-ant battle for temporary survival.

Well it worked and it seems they actually had some form of organization. So I think it's fair to call it a colony.

We could think of it as an extension of the parent colony. They still specialise, build, organise their waste and resources. Basically they still behave in as normal a way as they can given the limitations of their environment.

Yes. The queen doesn’t give orders, she just lays eggs. All the other ants decide individually what to do, based on what they can see and smell in the area. A colony without reproductives is still a colony, even if it is probably dying.

Ants recognize each other as friendly by smell, so the ants in the lower colony weren’t fighting each other. They were doing all the ordinary ant activities, just in a location that wasn’t great for the overall survivability of the whole colony (no food down there to bring back to the queen, for example).

That's the bit I'm missing: which ants are they eating if they are integrating all new falling ants in the underground colony? They just eat the otherwise dead?

> They just eat the otherwise dead?

Probably. Many ants do that.

With a title mentioning cannibal ants and a bunker, I'm surprised no-one has referenced Phase IV yet, but given it was a box office flop from 1974. I've not watched it in so long, but I seem to remember it being quite scary as a kid and the fact I still remember it now. On the offchance anyone remembers it or watches it I'd be curious what you think? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070531/

I still love that film. Fantastic shots by Saul Bass.

The birth of some otherworldly potentially superior intelligent species, maybe capable of annihilating mankind, but willing to live in peaceful coexistence, albeit probably under its rule. Some mysterious lovecraftian vibe regarding the origins of that intelligence. Great!

Just in case there are others like us: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28605976

Extremely fascinating! This feels like the real life equivalent of a horror game scenario.

> "They are doing the best they can, surrounded by dying."

That's what I think future humans will say about us, too (assuming that humanity survives puberty).

This reminds me of a documentary about the wood ants in Europe. Some war between nests and others abide with and tolerate each other. Same species, and there seems to be no rhyme or reason regarding the line between the two different ant cultures.

It was this David Attenborough documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ0DxSujfIU

Amazed that the author didn't include a reference to H.G. Wells' Time Machine. It's a formic parallel to the Eloi and Morlocks.

This makes me think of metro 2033 so bad, even to the dark post soviet bunker and admitedly cannibalistic feeling. I wonder what could have happened if a queen ant was introduced to the colony as a sort of experiment

So the lower colony eats fallen ants, but not all otherwise there'd be no lower colony.

If they were stacking bodies, was this excess food or parts they didn't eat?

> There were approximately two million corpses, many of which displayed bores from bites and fret holes—signs that their contents had been consumed, he says.

Really fascinating article. I also went for a rabbit hole by clicking the tag “cannibals”; there are more articles available than I thought there would be.

I wanted the first ant to climb out of the bunker, find the home nest destroyed, and yell, “You finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up!”

Lots of sci-fi reference in the comments but the first thing I thought of when reading the article was the movie Pandorum.

Reminds me a bit of Greg Egan's Incandescence - in addition to some other great comparisons itt.

The Deus ex machina ending ruined the whole thing.

Life finds a way.

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