Most people look at ants as annoying
animals which disturb their Sunday picnic. Ants are insects and majority of
people hate all insects in general (except ladybugs: ladybugs are sweet. Oh,
and bees too - because of honey). However, ants are in fact very interesting creatures
and I will try to tell you why you should look at them in more respectful way.
Ants are known for something which in scientific language is called “swarm intelligence”:. every ant knows what it should do in this very moment (and in every moment of its life). These creatures create great societies with a strong hierarchy. This is well known fact, but there are others, in my opinion much more intriguing.
For example a species called Monomorium santschii- is characterised by surprising type of parasitism. What is more it has no worker caste. A M. santschii Queen releases pheromones that attract ants of another species - Monomorium salomonis s. The salomonis ants get so excited because of the pheromones, that they pull the santschii queen into their nest, kill their own queen and make the santschii queen their new one. Then the queen though uses salomonis ants as slaves and forces them to take care of her offsprings. It may look horrible, but this is their nature and it makes them so fascinating.
Ants are known for something which in scientific language is called “swarm intelligence”:. every ant knows what it should do in this very moment (and in every moment of its life). These creatures create great societies with a strong hierarchy. This is well known fact, but there are others, in my opinion much more intriguing.
For example a species called Monomorium santschii- is characterised by surprising type of parasitism. What is more it has no worker caste. A M. santschii Queen releases pheromones that attract ants of another species - Monomorium salomonis s. The salomonis ants get so excited because of the pheromones, that they pull the santschii queen into their nest, kill their own queen and make the santschii queen their new one. Then the queen though uses salomonis ants as slaves and forces them to take care of her offsprings. It may look horrible, but this is their nature and it makes them so fascinating.
A Monomorium’s
species representative
Another interesting species of ants is Lasius flavus. This type can be found in the whole of Europe and North America. These ants live all their life underground; they do not have to go outside to look for food thanks to the fact that they breed aphids that produce honeydew for them. The ants control the population of aphids and, when there is too many of them, lasius flavus eat them to reduce the number of breeded animals. As we can see the borderline between slavery and breeding is narrow.
A Lasius flavus ant
Bullet ants (Paraponera clavata) are well known by most of the people thanks to their extremely potent sting. It causes a pain which is ranked as the most painful sting, according to the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Schmidt described the pain as „pure, intense, brilliant pain...like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel”[1] .This is why these ants are used by the Satere-Mawe people of Brazil during initiation rites for boys to become warriors. Hundreds of ants are woven into special gloves made of leaves and the boy, whose maturity is tested, has to wear these gloves for 5 minutes. When the rite finishes, his hands are paralysed and he may shake uncontrollably for days. This is the power of bullet ants.
Paraponera
clavata aka bullet ant
Bonus: a video
about the rite mentioned above:
Questions:
1. Do you like insects (especially ants)? Would you like to have an ant colony in order to observe how their structured life looks like?
2. If you could create a whole new species of ants and become its queen what kind of features would you “install” into their minds (how they would behave)?
3. Would you like to test yourself in initiation rite of the Satere-Mawe people of Brazil?
sources:
http://myrmekologia.wex.pl/data/monomorium.santschii.html
http://myrmekologia.wex.pl/data/lasius.flavus.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraponera_clavata
Comments
I would like to create ants that are able to program in Java, so I don't have to do it anymore.
Like most normal people, I would not like to test myself in initiation rite of the Satere-Mawe people of Brazil. Having cup of Brazilian coffee or going into beautiful Brazilian beach and enjoying great weather are more fun activity than this trial :P
It would be better not to implement my idea: I would make a spiece of ants that would kill other insects. But it would kill also an enviorment, co it isn't good idea. I just hate insects, but butterflies - there are nice and harmless.
I DEFINITELY wouldn't test myself as they do - this is stupidity and backwardness.
I know that the ants are very industrious. Maybe weather forecasting haha :) For example when the weather is bad, the ants colony will try to enter the house :D
It is really abstract question but I would also do abstract things like installing them chip to make them useful for people. They would work for people by connecting into huge herds and generate money :D
I wouldn’t like to test myself in such thing. It doesn’t test, show or say anything about person so it is useless. It’s their stupid practice.
hmm, question number two very strange to me. I don't know how to reply to this..
I would not to do that, it's dangerous.
Interesting question about creating new species. I would create something close to our mindset, but not so close, that they can not compete with us.
Shocking thing i've watched, so my answer is certainly not. I can't find out for myself, what they do it.
I wouldn't like to test myself in this initiation. I like my hands and prefer to have my body unharmed. If it's their tradition then I respect that. I wonder from where people get ideas like initiation with venomous ants or running on hot coals.
The main feature that i'd add is the ability to harvest some small and weaker bugs and breed them as humans breed cows or sheeps. And maybe the same thing with some plants. Just imagine such ants-farmers.
Sorry, but I am not interested in such thigns, so I definitely wouldn't like.
Crazy question, because I think there is no person who would voluntarily do it. It's rather matter of weird tradition. Of course, someone may not agree with me, because we have to resprect diversity, but this custom brings tremendous pain
But after looking at the picture with yellow elephant I remembered a game about ants. It's called A Bug's Life. It's a very old video-game, but I enjoyed it a lot. Maybe some of you played it too.
Spending whole day on beautiful Brazilian beach is indeed more relaxing than this trial but beeing sting by bulet ants would be more educational ("Now I know that this trial was stupid idea") :D
At work we built a distributed system based on swarm intelligence designed to process large amounts of textual information. Its elements work independently contributing to an overall solution without a central processing component. The system does not have a single point of failure and it theoretically scales without a limit.
If I could I would make ants clean my flat :)
I must admit this rite does seem to present more pain than gain ;) If I had to choose I would prefer to take part Navajo's peyote ceremony.
If the colony is wet- it's raining
If the colony is dry- sunny
If there is no colony- snowing or windy :D
You would become a respected and recognised meteorologist who as a first person in a world used the ant method of weather forecasting. Fame and money!
An interesting idea, I like it!
Well the trial test one thing- the level of attachment to tradition. Some people would try it once (like me for example) and after that would never try it again. But Satere-Mawe people of Brazil have to pass this trial 20 times.
Ants like humans but less intelligence? That would be nice! We could use them to build and create many technological wonders thans to their teamwork skill which is far more developed than in humans.
In such cultures adolescence is very important part of life and boys have to prove that they are no longer kids. Life of a kid is all about play and beeing happy but beeing an adult is about huge responsibilities for family and whole tribe. To show your friends and family that you are no longer a boy but an adult man you participate in such horrifying rite.
I have played this game too!
let's expand this thought: you can create a cleaning company for students/dorms/big companies... for everyone. And of course for you :)
Well Navajo's peyote ceremony is indeed more interesting (and less painful). What about ayahuasca ceremony? It could be much more intense than the peyote one.
I don't know ants so much that I could think of the characteristics they may lack. And I would never ever ever ever want to test myself initiation rite of the Satere-Mawe people of Brazil.
If I would be ants queen or king, I would make them do my house work like cleaning my room or cooking.
No, I would never want to try initiation rite of the Satere-Mawe people. I think I don't want to be their warrior ;)
If I could make new species, I'd probably create something useful for humans or natural environment, so they would repair our mistakes. Of course we should be careful not to make something too dangerous.
I'm not sure if I want to take part in any rite at all, so I believe this one wouldn't be exception. But who knows, maybe my mindset would change if I were drugged or overly drunk.
2. Not that interested.
3. People have really weird becoming of age rituals. For example rich Americans give their 16-year-old kids expensive cars to crash on a nearby lamppost.
1. I am not a great fan of insects, but if I had to choose, I’d prefer ants rather than mosquitos for example. I consider ants as a very hard working animals, and very interesting ones, inspiring also for computer science - I mean the ant colony optimization algorithm, which is a probabilistic technique for solving computational problems which can be reduced to finding good paths through graphs. It aims to search for an optimal path in a graph, based on the behavior of ants seeking a path between their colony and a source of food. When naturally ants find food, they return to their colony leaving a trace of pheromones. When another ant encounters this trace, it ceases to move randomly and follows the path towards food.
I guess having and observing the ant colony could be very interesting, the question is how to protect the whole house from ants’ invasion, because it wouldn’t be nice to find them everywhere…
2. I can imagine in my dreams that new species could bite very strongly people who destroy their colonies. That would protect their work from mindless destruction which often happens to them.
3. I definitely would’t like to test myself in such initiation rite. For men maybe it could have more sense to compare oneself to candidates to become warriors, to check a pain resistance, after all also to feel being alive - through suffering. As experience it must be both difficult to cope with, and very interesting, I suppose, so I can understand people who freely and intentionally decide to take part in the rite of the Satere-Mawe people of Brasil.
I can't really thing of a good use for ants, even a new species. I guess protecting our garden from some hostile insects would be pretty good.
I think these rituals are pure examples of stupidity. It's dangerous and unhealthy. It just proves that people who attempt them are uneducated and blindly follow their culture.
Second question? I don't want to think about it! It's strange for me!
I wouldn't like to test myself in this initiation, I know that every country has their own habits but I don't understand that one.
If you are asking me about initiation rite of the Satere-Mawe, I would say NO WAY! for me it's stupid.
As for the second question - maybe the possibility to control them? Like in the movie Ant-Man, they turned out to be pretty useful.
Regarding the ritual - I'm good without it :)
I'm not interested to have helots. I am not seeking to be in power.
I would not like to test myself in this kind of ritual.
Second question is basically "You become a nation leader, what would you do?" - I would probably make them listen me, and play it in the direction of gathering resources (you know, minerals and vespene gas :3).
All those rites make me think "We have invented a plane, developed lunar program and now we are heavily thinking about colonizing Mars, and yet, in the Earth's "lower body parts" crack, there are some guys who stick their hands into gloves full of ants just for fun and pain.
2. I would create a specie of ants producing bitcoins for me :)
Of course I wouldn't like to take part in this test. I thought such times passed long time ago, but I guess they didn't. This test proves nothing but the stupidity of the person that take part in it :)
2. Oh if I could create a new species of ants they would be really badass. They would kill other ants and then disguise as them in order to take over their colony.
3. Nah, I’m good
This question is funny and answers for it was even funnier. It would be a funny anecdote: I don't like programming in Java so much that I would learn to program ants instead of me. :D I don't have any other ideas. It is quite abstract for me.
Unfortunetely not, I am not fan of such initiations and I don't get it. ;)
Still, I think it's awesome how ant colony in fact works and how queen has dictatorship power over everybody and noone objects :).
If I could create a new species and become their leader I would of course install them more muscules and intelligence in order to make the greatest colony ever and take over the world.
The test initiation, would not participate, looks kinda silly but I wonder about its origin.
No especially in my vacation house they were involving a lot of problem around the house. It is good to watch their life in a controlled environment but when they choose the place to stay it is not so good.
2. If you could create a whole new species of ants and become its queen what kind of features would you “install” into their minds (how they would behave)?
Way too fantastic for me :)
3. Would you like to test yourself in initiation rite of the Satere-Mawe people of Brazil?
It doesn't look too good - I hate rites of almost any kind.
I have nothing against insects. Of course there are those I hate, but there are very few of them. The worst of them are probably mosquitoes, which can irritate a man in the summer afternoon. I believe that creating a new ant species would not be a good solution for the environment. I would not like to participate in such a ritual
Hm, I’m not sure if I’d like to have an ant colony, but observing their structured life could be interesting.
Hmm… Maybe some skill to unite and create one, bigger organism? That could be cool.
No! Man, I’ve seen some documentary about bullet ants. Their bite is incredibly painful.
If I could create a new species of ants, I wouldn't change anything. Ants work perfectly! The only thing I would change would be their size. They would have to be much bigger.
I would like to see the sand structure which are their homes! That would be unbelievable!
For sure I wouldn't like to test myself in initiation rite of the Satere-Mawe...
If I could create my own type of ants I would give them ability to understand speech and communicate in some way. Probably the most sense would be to "talk" through writing because of their small size. It would be great. I'd have sooooo many questions.