Tag: ants

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Fear

Posted on by Jinavie

The ten things people are most afraid of are as following (according to a study of 1000 people in France in 1990):

  1. Snakes
  2. Nauseatingly high places
  3. Spiders
  4. Rats
  5. Bees
  6. Enclosed spaces
  7. Fire
  8. Blood
  9. Darkness
  10. Crowds/audience

Ants do not feel fear. The reason is simple. An ant does not know the meaning of death or its own frailty. It may worry about the survival of its city and the entire society, but even then they do not fear their own death.

To understand why they are never afraid, one must first consider that an anthill acts as a single organism. Each ant acts like a cell in the human body.
When we clip our nails, are our fingertips afraid? When we shave, is the hair scared as the razor approaches it? When you dip your feet in the bath to check the temperature, does the toe shudder in fear? Because they do not act as an autonomous unit, they do not feel fear.

Similarly, when we pinch our right hand with the left hand, the right hand does not feel contempt towards the left hand. If the left hand has more rings, the right hand does not envy it. If you forget self and think of the community like an organism, all your worries disappear. Perhaps this is how ants run such a successful, efficient society.

(from The Encyclopaedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge by Bernard Werber)

Posted in Science & Nature

Trophallaxis

Posted on by Jinavie

One of the key characteristics of social animals is the act of helping other members of the society. People often think that nature is ruled by “the survival of the fittest” and selfishness for survival, but societies are common in the animal kingdom. For example, even insects, that people consider “inferior”, such as ants build massive empires and cities, forming an unbelievably intricate and efficient society.

In the wild, all animals must find food to live, but due to competition and the environmental conditions, there are days when an animal cannot find enough food. For times like this, ants have a second communal stomach which they fill with leftover food after a meal. They then approach a hungry colony member and offers it a meal. If the other ant accepts, the two ants then lock their mouths together and one ant brings up the food in the communal stomach into the other ant’s mouth. Benefaction such as this allows for a smooth functioning of the society.

There is another role of trophallaxis (the transfer of nutrients via the mouth-to-mouth route described above): communication. Ants rub their antennae together to identify each other’s pheromones, which acts as identification such as what colony they are from and their role in the colony. Some scholars suggest that trophallaxis is the origin of the kiss.

The act of offering pre-stored food to comrades is also found in vertebrates such as birds and bats. For instance, some species of birds feed, return to its nest and then vomits the food for the young to feed on.
Helping those in need to create an efficient and functional society, and reaping the rewards of quid pro quo: that is the way of the philosophy of 1 + 1 = 3.