Fascinating stuff, I wonder if nature is reusing the "care" neuro-circuitry or if it's some other mechanism. Brood care and fellow care seem to be related by that thread. Would love to see those ants fMRIs at each stage.
> The ants carry out prophylactic amputations. This not only protects the colony from infection but also doubles the survival rate of the injured workers.
To keep everybody around you healthy makes the probability of caching a disease lower for yourself, too.
Grooming behaviour in primates helps in the same way. And it is so important that it is linked to all kinds of mental rewards.
To let disease run amok in your own neighborhood it would be very costly.
Ants are also a special case because the vast majority of ants cannot reproduce. Only the queen and drones are reproductive agents, 99.9 percent of the colony are non reproductive, so their investment in the survival of the colony is total, they have no individual agenda.
As I understand it, the individual vs the group situation is complicated by their shared genetic pool.
I'd imagine it as having dozens of clones of myself, and one of them is tasked with reproducing for the rest of us. It sounds like a total lack of individualism, but if the offspring has my genes and is raised like me (potentially by me), how far is it from being my own ?
eusocial animals are really cool you can kinda treat the entire colony as a single organism. weirdly enough this isn't restricted to insects there are actually some eusocial mammals.
Which shows the anti-vaxxer idiot herd is even more of a plague on society than they think. It does not only increase the risk for themselves (which alone increases the downstream burden on the healthcare system), it also increases risks and harm to the rest of society.
They are literally more stupid than ants, who willingly prophylactically amputate limbs to minimize risk to themselves and their neighbors.
Lots of people do lots of things that increase the downstream burden on the healthcare system, including being obese, sedentary, driving cars, having a poor diet, engaging in substance abuse, contact sports, skydiving, rock climbing, etc.
Exactly zero of those things you list also spread disease throughout the population, and are aggressively anti-science. They only arguably affect the person themselves and the overall HC costs.
Moreover, for the active items you listed: driving, contact sports, skydiving, rock climbing, etc., nearly everyone doing them takes real precautions to minimize the health risks — their motivation is to continue doing the event, not to get injuries which would prevent them enjoying their activity.
In the passive harms you mentioned, the people are passive, not active. No one intentionally becomes obese or sedentary or ruins their diet; they simply fail to have the motivation or to learn the knowledge required to do better (or they have actual conditions that prevent them from doing so). There is nothing intentional about it.
In contrast, the anti-science anti-vaxxers willfully maintain and aggressively spread their ignorance and impose their ignorant bad decisions as costs on society and increased health risks for everyone.
The anti-vaxxers are doing the opposite of taking safety-measures to improve health and safety of their activities — instead, they actively evade free, safe, and effective health and public health measures.
The anti-vaxxers are doing the opposite of passively failing to maintain their health — instead they actively deny science, medicine, and public health issues, and actively evade recommendations or mandates.
As the study illustrated, they are literally more stupid and anti-society than ants. They freeload off the health care system and herd immunity built and maintained by their smarter peers.
>>Driving alone kills far more people every year than disease spread by anti-vaxxers
That is a seriously dubious claim. Just for COVID, or Influenza, deaths from nonvaccination are well into six figures per year in heavy years. While most of those can be attributed to the non-vaxxed person themselves dying of their own ignorance or obstinance, they also more widely spread the disease and many of those deaths are innocent bustanders, either those who can not get vaccinations for actual medical reasons, or for whom it doesn't provide full immunity. Even at the 10% level, the deaths from each are comparable.
The solution for non-vaccination is also a LOT easier than the solution for not driving — implementing full vaccination protocol is a LOT easier and faster to do than building full public transport system covering the entire continent.
Moreover, even if it existing stats show driving with higher deaths, it is irrelevant — two things can be bad and we should fix both, not just dismiss one because there is another evil. Most critically, that is also PAST data, so using it is driving in the rear-view mirror. The effects of growing non-vaccination compound and grow exponentially. When the numbers cross, it is already too late.
No, ants are not the topic of discussion here... the original comment was extending the ant patterns to human communities, and the comment I replied to said they've been saying this for years (presumably about human communities). I'm trying to get rid of the misdirection and see exactly which ant colony practices people are saying should be done with/to human communities, and why.
In a sense, Aldous Huxley explored these ideas in his novel "Brave New World." [0] The novel describes a world were there is a rational order to human society, which has been engineered to be "optimal." A very good read I highly recommend.
I’m surprised they don’t just eject the injured worker from the colony. I wonder if there are specific tasks the amputated ant then goes on to do, or if they resume their former duties at a lower speed.
I'm going to hazard a speculative answer with poor evidence: love.
The ants love one another, as shown by their child-rearing, grooming, playing, the "antennating" mentioned in the article, collective defense, and deliberate handling of their dead.
We don't understand their language, but I have a certain faith that ants experience a very similar kinship for their sisters as we. If they were strictly-rational robots then why would they show these behaviors?
While I concede it's possible the ants in some sense love each other. I suspect that it's actually net beneficial. Each ant has a certain cost to manufacture for the colony, a damaged ant is better than no ant, they're not rehabilitating ants who will never be productive again, these ants lost (part of) one limb, and with it removed they are disabled but still productive for the colony and at low risk of introducing infections.
I remember when I was much younger I got cancer. The same cancer Hank Green had more recently if you want a relateable celebrity example. It's fixable, and I live in a country with universal healthcare, so of course they fixed it. Even if you care only about simple economics that's a sound investment. I was already a massive net cost, needing feeding and care for decades before I became an adult able to do something useful and then almost immediately (in fact, technically before getting my first "real" job) getting cancer. If you do nothing the cancer kills me, we can't prove it's fatal because we figured out how to cure it† before modern scientific medicine and it would be unethical to study that on real volunteers now, but we can observe that crazy people who insist "No" when offered a cure today do die, horribly, as you'd expect if it's deadly.
But under universal healthcare of course you fix people like me, we become ordinary productive citizens and contribute to society including by paying some eyewatering amount of taxes over the subsequent years, which helps pay for said universal healthcare.
Many cases aren't like mine, but we forget that quite a lot are, and without universal healthcare you are net losing money so as to hurt poor people which is full-on "Capitalism is a death cult" insanity.
† Some people will tell you cancer can't be "cured". Well, OK, the doctors who treated me do this all day every day, they'd never had a young man die of this cancer. They'd had some close calls, some old men die of this cancer, and they'd had plenty of young men die from other cancers under their care, but this one, nope. There are technical reasons, but they're boring and Hank Green probably made a better video explaining them than I could.
I mean that is an untestable claim right? Like we can only infer from their behavior and there is no absolute way to really understand what consiousness is and how other species experience it. So while yes they may love each other but love is a very complex emotion with specific meaning while what they do is more reactive actions that keep the herd safe instead of subjective affection. It is highly unlikely ants are capable of complex emotions given their nervous system design
> You said its an "Untestable claim" yet you are sure its "highly unlikely" ants are capable of emotion. Which is it?
It can be both, right? To the best of our knowledge, they are not likely to have complex emotions. We cannot test it due to physical and technological limitations.
You can argue the other way but "proof is in the system" is not a very sound one.
Well ants have outlived the chimp troupe and its over rated intelligence by 200 million years.
So there are serious people who think if the chimps(or any social species for that matter) ever survive 200 million years borrowing ant like behavior at individual and group level is a possible way.
I’d be careful labelling any of that “love” though. There’s certainly not any proof of ants “loving” each other, they have a community, sure, but that’s just doing what best serves their colony. I’d need more evidence to consider that “love”.
That is super cool. Unfortunately I cannot access the original article to see the methodology, but they mention using a system that can track individual ants in a colony of ~100.
I was wondering about the same thing. From the OP:
* ... the team examined six colonies, each comprising 110 ants .... Using a fully automated tracking system, the researchers were able to precisely monitor the movements and hundreds of thousands of interactions of each ant, as well as their wound care, over a period of weeks.*
I wonder about the background of that software - how does it work, who developed it, how much does it cost, how much data does it output? It's applications are profound, including for human privacy, but I think I already knew about its use there.
What proof do you have? I think you're wrong. They do feel pain but know what they are doing is a net positive. Sort of how civil war injuries resulted in amputations. A lot of amputees back then definitely felt pain.
Until the 80s, many medical professionals believed infants could not feel pain due to an underdeveloped nervous system and performed major invasive surgeries in babies without anesthesia.
Doctors sometimes used paralytic agents to keep the infant completely still instead of pain relievers.
It was horrifying when I found out about that.
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 32.1 ms ] threadTo keep everybody around you healthy makes the probability of caching a disease lower for yourself, too.
Grooming behaviour in primates helps in the same way. And it is so important that it is linked to all kinds of mental rewards.
To let disease run amok in your own neighborhood it would be very costly.
I'd imagine it as having dozens of clones of myself, and one of them is tasked with reproducing for the rest of us. It sounds like a total lack of individualism, but if the offspring has my genes and is raised like me (potentially by me), how far is it from being my own ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality
the book coalescent by Stephen Baxter is an interesting take on what that might look like in humans as well if you're interested in the topic.
They are literally more stupid than ants, who willingly prophylactically amputate limbs to minimize risk to themselves and their neighbors.
Exactly zero of those things you list also spread disease throughout the population, and are aggressively anti-science. They only arguably affect the person themselves and the overall HC costs.
Moreover, for the active items you listed: driving, contact sports, skydiving, rock climbing, etc., nearly everyone doing them takes real precautions to minimize the health risks — their motivation is to continue doing the event, not to get injuries which would prevent them enjoying their activity.
In the passive harms you mentioned, the people are passive, not active. No one intentionally becomes obese or sedentary or ruins their diet; they simply fail to have the motivation or to learn the knowledge required to do better (or they have actual conditions that prevent them from doing so). There is nothing intentional about it.
In contrast, the anti-science anti-vaxxers willfully maintain and aggressively spread their ignorance and impose their ignorant bad decisions as costs on society and increased health risks for everyone.
The anti-vaxxers are doing the opposite of taking safety-measures to improve health and safety of their activities — instead, they actively evade free, safe, and effective health and public health measures.
The anti-vaxxers are doing the opposite of passively failing to maintain their health — instead they actively deny science, medicine, and public health issues, and actively evade recommendations or mandates.
As the study illustrated, they are literally more stupid and anti-society than ants. They freeload off the health care system and herd immunity built and maintained by their smarter peers.
I'm not defending anti-vaxxers. But they are not a big problem. And you can vaccinate yourself and worry even less.
That is a seriously dubious claim. Just for COVID, or Influenza, deaths from nonvaccination are well into six figures per year in heavy years. While most of those can be attributed to the non-vaxxed person themselves dying of their own ignorance or obstinance, they also more widely spread the disease and many of those deaths are innocent bustanders, either those who can not get vaccinations for actual medical reasons, or for whom it doesn't provide full immunity. Even at the 10% level, the deaths from each are comparable.
The solution for non-vaccination is also a LOT easier than the solution for not driving — implementing full vaccination protocol is a LOT easier and faster to do than building full public transport system covering the entire continent.
Moreover, even if it existing stats show driving with higher deaths, it is irrelevant — two things can be bad and we should fix both, not just dismiss one because there is another evil. Most critically, that is also PAST data, so using it is driving in the rear-view mirror. The effects of growing non-vaccination compound and grow exponentially. When the numbers cross, it is already too late.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World
Eusocial Security?
The ants love one another, as shown by their child-rearing, grooming, playing, the "antennating" mentioned in the article, collective defense, and deliberate handling of their dead.
We don't understand their language, but I have a certain faith that ants experience a very similar kinship for their sisters as we. If they were strictly-rational robots then why would they show these behaviors?
I remember when I was much younger I got cancer. The same cancer Hank Green had more recently if you want a relateable celebrity example. It's fixable, and I live in a country with universal healthcare, so of course they fixed it. Even if you care only about simple economics that's a sound investment. I was already a massive net cost, needing feeding and care for decades before I became an adult able to do something useful and then almost immediately (in fact, technically before getting my first "real" job) getting cancer. If you do nothing the cancer kills me, we can't prove it's fatal because we figured out how to cure it† before modern scientific medicine and it would be unethical to study that on real volunteers now, but we can observe that crazy people who insist "No" when offered a cure today do die, horribly, as you'd expect if it's deadly.
But under universal healthcare of course you fix people like me, we become ordinary productive citizens and contribute to society including by paying some eyewatering amount of taxes over the subsequent years, which helps pay for said universal healthcare.
Many cases aren't like mine, but we forget that quite a lot are, and without universal healthcare you are net losing money so as to hurt poor people which is full-on "Capitalism is a death cult" insanity.
† Some people will tell you cancer can't be "cured". Well, OK, the doctors who treated me do this all day every day, they'd never had a young man die of this cancer. They'd had some close calls, some old men die of this cancer, and they'd had plenty of young men die from other cancers under their care, but this one, nope. There are technical reasons, but they're boring and Hank Green probably made a better video explaining them than I could.
I think you're wrong, and its painfully obvious that ants do indeed form a bond with their community. The proof is in the system.
It can be both, right? To the best of our knowledge, they are not likely to have complex emotions. We cannot test it due to physical and technological limitations.
You can argue the other way but "proof is in the system" is not a very sound one.
So there are serious people who think if the chimps(or any social species for that matter) ever survive 200 million years borrowing ant like behavior at individual and group level is a possible way.
I think in this case forcibly ejecting the injured ant could lead to more injuries of otherwise healthy ants.
[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098220...
I'd like to read the paper to skim over the methodology but it's not open-access :(
[1] https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/fileadmin/uniwue/2026/0702Ameis...
I wonder what kind of biometrics allow that. The ants do not seem to be tagged individually in the linked video: https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/fileadmin/uniwue/2026/0702Ameis...
Not to be too speciesist, but the ants kind of all look the same to me.
* ... the team examined six colonies, each comprising 110 ants .... Using a fully automated tracking system, the researchers were able to precisely monitor the movements and hundreds of thousands of interactions of each ant, as well as their wound care, over a period of weeks.*
I wonder about the background of that software - how does it work, who developed it, how much does it cost, how much data does it output? It's applications are profound, including for human privacy, but I think I already knew about its use there.