do ants ever concert their efforts? i’m thinking specifically about like a whole bunch of ants pulling in one direction, to maybe drag a cockroach corpse closer to the hill or away from other bugs?
i have seen ants pulling and tugging at stuff, but it’s always been just to rip a part of whatever off. do they synchronize?
I’ve seen ants concert to get me off their hill. They did this by biting the shit out of me. Little bastards.
[Back to the OP]
FWIW, I’ve seen them do it. I don’t have it on film nor do I have a url to prove it so you’ll just have to take my word for it. I watched the little buggers carry a dead grasshopper about 6 feet. It was pretty amazing.
The things you’ll watch while drunk.
Of course they synchronize. Ants work together no matter what the task. All ‘colony’ insects do. I’m amazed that you have never watched a Discovery or Animal Channel special on ants.
of course i have. but there is a difference between each ant doing its own thing (e.g. carrying a little piece of food back to the nest) and a concerted effort (all of the ants summing their carrying capacity to move a large mofo). i have never seen such teamwork, and wondered if they do it.
‘working together’ has a range of meaning.
Ants cooperate to a remarkable degree. Read Holldobler/Wilson – it’s the definitive tome. (It’s huge, too. After you’re done reading it, you can use it to block the wheel of a Flying Fortress.)
For example: One species of weaver ants builds shelters out of large sections of cut leaf. After a section of leaf is cut, some ants grab the edges of the cut, others grab the grabbers, and others grab them, etc., forming a chain of ant bodies between the two sides. They then pull on each other, drawing the two sides together, until they’re close enough to be anchored.
This is just one example. Ants are pretty remarkable creatures. They have slaves, they conduct agriculture; if it weren’t for the Happy Meals and kung fu movies, you might consider them the dominant form of life on the planet.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by synchronize. I doubt they tell each other “Ok, gals… on three!” but they’re no doubt all aware that they have found food and the scent trail back the the colony is the place to take the food to. As such, they’ll all work together (if only as seperate units) to drag the food back to home base. Likewise, they concert their efforts to protect the colony from invaders, raid other colonies, raise the young, dig new tunnels, etc. While the “hive mind” might be overrated if you expect the ants to act like the beasties in Aliens, it is a fact that they have a clear divison of labor and all are working towards the benefit of the colony.