An ant scouting for food...

An ant scouting for food comes up to a blade of grass that it must go around. Which way does the ant go, left, right, or over?

The real question is, whichever direction the ant goes, isn't it a conscious choice?

hmm.. we're told ants rely on pheromones for communication,
humans also, it's said..
..interesting, thanks for posting

When I was a kid I would watch ants through a magnifying glass for hours and hours, and their every conscious choice was mesmerizing to me...tiny yet so clever...until I fried them with the magnifying glass of course...

Originally posted by jiggerj
An ant scouting for food comes up to a blade of grass that it must go around. Which way does the ant go, left, right, or over?

The real question is, whichever direction the ant goes, isn't it a conscious choice?

If I would compare man and ants. if I was not so focused on seeing and I would use my arms to coordinate my movements like the antennae of an ant... well if my right would feel it and my left wouldn't I would go left and visa versa. If both would feel it and my feet would have as much grip as the feet/legs of an ant I would go over it.

Im not claiming consciousness or the lack of consciousness whatsoever.

Btw if my nose would bump in to it I would smoke it

I do know a good bit about ants. I know ants will search for food and use chemicals to single to their little ant counter parts there is food in the location. Ants use chemicals as away to communicate compared to how humans speak. There are many videos online you can find with this and much more information. Ants are awesome little superheros.

We have these huge ant hills around here with aggressive ants that are half red and black (red head and thorax and black abdominal, I think). They will sting with formic acid if disturbed. Anyhow I was camping in an area where these huge ant hills were everywhere and I had a throw rug in front of my tent that I would sit on. The ants were invading my space (rug) so I killed everyone that crossed the line, crushing them into the fabric. After a short while, the ants that came onto my rug seemed to smell their dead comrades and would turn right around and avoid my rug. I believe they smelled a death scent left by the dying ants and decided to reroute around my rug. Just an observation I had experimented with. Sorry if that it is off topic, although somewhat related. I guess I'm saying they merely have instinctual reactions to stimulus.

reply to post by MichiganSwampBuck

After a short while, the ants that came onto my rug seemed to smell their dead comrades and would turn right around and avoid my rug. I believe they smelled a death scent left by the dying ants...
Sorry if that it is off topic,

Not off topic at all. Are you sure it was a death scent and not an intelligent thought? I'm looking for examples of what might appear as intelligence in the lower life forms.

I know that when bees find a food source they communicate the location of the food to the rest of the hive. Not just where the food is, but how high it is from the ground. This tells me that bees have a memory where the location of the food source is stored. They REMEMBER where the food is. Wouldn't this constitute holding onto a complex thought? I dunno.

reply to post by jiggerj


I wanted to say that instinct is a type of thought, but I couldn't back that with anything. Just one of my thoughts as a small and insignificant bug on the surface of planet Earth.

reply to post by MichiganSwampBuck


Thanks for sharing the story MichiganSwampBuck. I think the dead ants were sending chemical warnings to their hive mates. Like do not go here or risk death. Ants are mysterious because humans don't use chemicals to communicate and it's difficult to understand. Here is the video I mentioned earlier. An in-depth look at ants.
The video explains how ants use chemicals to communicate and hunt for food.

Originally posted by PurpleVortex
When I was a kid I would watch ants through a magnifying glass for hours and hours, and their every conscious choice was mesmerizing to me...tiny yet so clever...until I fried them with the magnifying glass of course...

At work, during lunch, I sit outside where a lot of ants are out looking for food. Each time when one of them heads for me I lift up my boot to see if they'll walk beneath it without fear. More times than not they will scurry away while a few don't seem to notice the danger. Is this a matter of intelligent thought, but with some of them as dumb as, well, as dumb as an ant?

Originally posted by Dumbass

If I would compare man and ants. if I was not so focused on seeing and I would use my arms to coordinate my movements like the antennae of an ant... well if my right would feel it and my left wouldn't I would go left and visa versa. If both would feel it and my feet would have as much grip as the feet/legs of an ant I would go over it.

Im not claiming consciousness or the lack of consciousness whatsoever.

Btw if my nose would bump in to it I would smoke it

I'm betting that some members here must be thinking I'm smoking something in order to come up this thread.

Now, what if there was a pool of water on the left side of that blade of grass? If ants don't have the ability to reason, wouldn't they try walking on the water without thinking that the right side of the blade of grass is clear?

Originally posted by jiggerj

Originally posted by Dumbass

If I would compare man and ants. if I was not so focused on seeing and I would use my arms to coordinate my movements like the antennae of an ant... well if my right would feel it and my left wouldn't I would go left and visa versa. If both would feel it and my feet would have as much grip as the feet/legs of an ant I would go over it.

Im not claiming consciousness or the lack of consciousness whatsoever.

Btw if my nose would bump in to it I would smoke it

I'm betting that some members here must be thinking I'm smoking something in order to come up this thread.

Now, what if there was a pool of water on the left side of that blade of grass? If ants don't have the ability to reason, wouldn't they try walking on the water without thinking that the right side of the blade of grass is clear?

Well the obstacle pool of water is just a new obstacle. (Btw I know they follow paths of chemicals but for this question I assume the road was new) if you would feel left clear but wet you would try the right... right?
Its like everything trail and error.

As far as I understand ants don't think for themselves per say



That is not a factual representation of ant life

But they do have amazing powers of co-operation for the good of the collective, it is irrelevant which direction the ant takes as long as the goal is reached

Cody

An ant scouting for food comes up to a blade of grass that it must go around. Which way does the ant go, left, right, or over? The real question is, whichever direction the ant goes, isn't it a conscious choice?

Apply this to yourself under the following conditions.....

You are traveling in a car at high speed while being chased, you encounter a wall in the middle of the road. You can not see beyond this wall and you must choose to go around.

Which way do you go? More importantly are you even aware of the factors of the choice after you make it? Would anyone observing this from an outside perspective think you made a conscious choice?

There isn't much point to having a brain if you are not aware you have one.

reply to post by jiggerj

I've had the same thought jigger.

Instinct is powerful, but at the higher executive level where decisions take place, I don't think it's capable enough. A creature needs dynamic response to avoid obstacles and dangers. This means a creature has to absorb new information and be able to retain it to avoid things effectively.

Humans have a great amount of executive capability, but we have instincts too. I've read of numerous examples. One of them showed that the presence of a drinking fountain changes how we relate ourselves to our society and how we react to the immediate environment surrounding us.

Does a male scorpion performing a mating dance in the presence of a female feel lust or excitement? His claws are quivering. He does this for an hour before depositing sperm on the ground. Most conventional scientists say it's just an elaborate instinct. The quivering claws is just a byproduct of the dance. When he scurries off after the deed, the whole thing is cleared from his mind.

We have just enough science to classify animals, but not enough to read their minds. And it's the unknown where we expose our prejudices. We fill in the gaps with our expectations.

"There's no evidence." is just an excuse to classify them as instinctive non-thinking creatures. Besides, these same researchers don't flinch when they inject cancer into a rat or (believe it or not) baby monkey. And at the end of the day, it's relieving to feel we're special. It's empowering.

Reminds me of a documentary i watched about driver ants specifically where they made a bridge:




about choice and free will, time and reality get confusing for me and I think about how observation is important to so many things so that I suspect that there is a lot of room in existence to have input

reply to post by jonnywhite


A neighbor across the street had two cats (probably brothers). These cats were put out at night to roam the neighborhood. They never bothered with me or even turned to look at me when I called to them. One night I was on the porch when one of these cats got into a nasty brawl with another cat. The brother to the fighting cat was so scared, it suddenly turned to me and meowed the most pleading meow for me to stop the fight.

This scared cat had to recognize that I existed, and had to formulate many complicated thoughts and come to conclusions.

1. I was not an enemy.
2. Call it cat language, but it knew or hoped that I would understand its message.
3. That I was big enough to stop the fight.
4. That I knew how to stop the fight.
5. That I would not join in the fight.
6. That I would save his brother.

That's a lot of thought for a dumb animal, don't you think?

Originally posted by UNIT76

hmm.. we're told ants rely on pheromones for communication,
humans also, it's said..
..interesting, thanks for posting

Also it seems more like a instinct of survival choice as the ant is scouting for food... and following the chemical pheromones agenda/path set by previous ants and so, now a conscious choice for the ant would be what did the other ants do who left the chemical path before the ant came upon the blade of grass.

cool cat story.. did you save the cat? if so, were the cats friendlier after that? if not, did you beat them both up? tee hee

Also it seems more like a instinct of survival choice as the ant is scouting for food... and following the chemical pheromones agenda/path set by previous ants and so, now a conscious choice for the ant would be what did the other ants do who left the chemical path before the ant came upon the blade of grass.

punctuation would clarify that.
the initial scouting ant isn't following a trail, some degree of autonomy is required.
...punctuation would've made this ..understandable?

well, i'll take a stab at some of this..
we know about the concept of a hive mind and people often make comparisons to individuality vs collectivism using ants and other social insects. in the same way we're seeing chemicals used to communicate larger ideas, messages to the individual units, we eventually have to trace this all back to a source. some kind of intelligence that directs the group at large. someone who wrote the chemical instruction set. you know what i mean? of course you do, you're all 6 legged and robust members of the ant core..

..anyway about these chems/pheromones and humans, we've established humans don't nearly rely on / are unaware of the use of pheromones / chems (we call it consciousness and thinking) yet we still often hear about terms such as animal attraction (if you see where i'm going with this..)
..i recall hearing something about kirlian photography explained as revealing information on the internal states (biofeedback), apparently there are multiple sites on the human body where various chems are released (sweat)
this seems to correspond to what we're seeing in ants, only there seems to be a greater significance on the chemicals themselves and less on what we're calling reasoning skills, logic, consciousness, etc..

groupthink > chemicals
individuality > consciousness
(?)

..well, i got this piece of dung beetle i gotta get back to the larvae, seeya back at the nest.

reply to post by jiggerj


I would have said flies are conscious. We just do not understand them enough yet..