26.2.10

Supersize Ant Architecture

an anthropological study has filled an ant colony with cement, and then dug away the surrounding earth to reveal the huge structure.


Giant Ant Colony is a World Wonder - Watch more Funny Videos


this video has gone a bit viral, at least with the people I know, but its unbelievable. my initial reaction was that i wanted to ditch being a human and jump on the ant wagon, live inside one of those things, be part of something of that scale that is a complete communal effort of epic proportions. and there are obvious reasons to why a person would think that, but clearly being an ant, you wouldn't appreciate your own creation. this basic thought had initially failed to enter my mind. There's a quote from Carl Sagan's cosmos series that i've been talking about a lot with a friend at the moment as well that sums up this dilemma completely, 'We are a way for the cosmos to know itself'. The fact that we can examine, marvel at and understand the beauty of this ant colony, is crazy in itself.

Ants have the perfect blueprint for intelligent life. Whereas humans are largely focused on selfish gains, the ants are biologically programmed to share life, the workload and the product. and they don't even have to think about it. There are clearly examples of where humans have combined to create a huge feat of engineering or building, but this is usually overshadowed by a tyrannical source of power. maybe the internet, world wide web, is our equivalent to this huge infrastructure?it seems that although we are endowed with this huge cocktail of conscience and intelligent thought there will eternally be the ones who use this to bad effect. could you see a person, group of people, linking up to span a bridge across a huge gorge and then letting the rest of the population walk over them to get to the other side?even if it was possible.

Heres an old related article i read recently, from New Scientist:
An ant "empire" has been found stretching 6000 kilometres from Italy to Portugal. The supercolony of Argentine ants is thought to be the largest cooperative unit ever recorded, says Laurent Keller of the University of Lausanne in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (early edition). The ants, which were introduced to Europe by accident in the 1920s, instantly accept genetically similar newcomers into nests even if they are from distant colonies. The empire's reign is threatened, however, by a second supercolony of hostile ants that has established itself in eastern Spain.

glad i've finally covered ants, there was some greater point to this post. I forgot it.

Giddings

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