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I am still new to the Fediverse so please let me know if it is bad form to share one’s own experiences in a topic like this one.
“We have seen that large groups of ants often outperform small ones by following the most direct path when transitioning between states” On a field trip to a local park, I encouraged my students to interact with Nature. One student with persistent allergies saw a two-way trail of ants crossing a sidewalk and decided to spit a gob of mucus on the sidewalk in the path of the ants. Surprisingly, instead of walking around of this small barrier, first one ant and then more and more ants began “attacking” the mucus and worked diligently to attempt to very painstakingly move this obstacle out of their path. No ants were trapped in the mucus. It was not long before a small army of ants joined in on the activity of breaking down the barrier which had appeared in their apparent food-pheromone trail. When we left the park 15 minutes later, there were more than two dozen ants which had come from the two sides of the original pheromone path blocked by the mucus, working away at chewing and removing the obstacle.
I’ve always known ants were intelligent, but this is blowing my mind.
In my head, I was just thinking “a whole bunch of different ants brute-forcing it until it works isn’t intelligence.” Then I saw the video where they’re actively rotating it after it isn’t going in and realized, holy shit, I’d still be trying to push it.
These guys mastered pivoting. Next time I’m moving my sofa, I know who I’m gonna call.
What was the impetus that drove the ants to move it from one side to the other?
I am an ant, I knew it
Love the videos of the humans solving the puzzle. Let’s see an octopus next!
Isn’t this just brute force? Liek trying random directions until one works?
Not gonna lie, they figured it out faster than me. Never going to look at ants the same.
PIVOT!
How do you coerce ants to solve puzzles?
Amazing. “Something” is definitely aware of rotation, “fits”/shapes and taking a step back from a local minimum to move forward. Seeing them all done together is even more impressive. What else are “they” aware of and…how many do you need to have this team spatial awareness? 100?
