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Jul 2, 2009 01:00 PM | 6
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Those ants crawling across your picnic table this weekend might be members of a massive, transnational ant mafia, recently reported by researchers in Japan and Spain.
Billions of Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) from North America, Europe and Japan are not only interrelated, but when introduced to foreign cousins they get along like old amigos—an unusual reaction for this otherwise hostile breed—reports the BBC.
The conquering colony is composed of three distinct super-colonies—one in California (560 miles, or 900 kilometers, long), one along the Mediterranean coast (3,700 miles, or 6,000 kilometers, long) and one in Kobe, Japan—that all share similar genetic make-ups, and therefore familiar chemical cues.
“The enormous extent of this population is paralleled only by human society,” the researchers wrote in the paper, published in Insectes Sociaux, a journal about social behavior in insects.
Humans are, of course, the reason for the colony’s breadth. People have been accidentally spreading the invasive ants—originally from South America—around the globe for a century and continue to circulate the mega-colony members. The species now inhabits more than a dozen countries and all six of the livable continents.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
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6 Comments
Add CommentI think ants are the most interesting creatures out there. Think about it, they can't have very much individual processing power because their brains are not that big, and I'll bet, not that complex. But yet they have an amazing group mentality. The whole colony woks together in an organized logical way. This ability seems to be greater then one individual ant can handle.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuestions:
How do they do that?
What if this is applied to computer systems on the net?
Should this be applied to computers?
@joeldooris: I could be wrong, but isn't that what dual-core and quad-core (and the like) processors do?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would think the processor cores would be more of how an individual ant would work. Distributed processors would be more like the colony, but your point is taken. Good call.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMultiple processor chips exist because we can not run processors any faster without problems, switching takes time and the switched state needs to stabilise. A dual core processor does not work twice as fast as a single core similar speed processor, lucky if you can get a third more processing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBees, termites and ants exhibit hive intelligence. If we look close microbes and viruses could be doing the same.
If I could have a processor as intelligent as an ant!
If a continent is a large land mass surrounded by water, there are a total of six continents. If we get to divide Europe and Asia into two continents, whatever the criteria, that criteria should apply to all parts of the world. I hope SciAm. will make this one of its 60 second topics. And if the ants are from South America, what is the size of that original colony?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisContinenets, like languages, are partly an artifical division; as much cultural and political as physical. The "large land mass surrounded by water" definition gives me two continents: the Americas and Africa/Europe/Asia. Three if you count Australia. Four with Greenland... I am assuming that canals and rivers don't count as part of the surrounding water.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is probably a conveniently placed mountain range that is taken as the border between Europe and Asia (the Urals?)
Not sure where N America ends and S America starts. Mexico's southern border maybe.
You are right, it would make a good topic.