How smart are ants? These fuckers on my front lawn seem pretty

>>8129769
Burn them all lol

>>8129769
Collective intelligence, which I'm sorry that I can not describe well as I have not studied it. Anyhow, ants "observe" ants being killed by unknowable factors which by the smell and placement of dead ants is localized. So they work together to move the hive away from the source of pointless death, none of them actually quite "knowing" what they are doing beyond moving dirt and digging.

>>8129819
I would but my neighbors will get pissed. It's just so fucking strange, it's as if they know what the poison is and that it kills them.

There is no fucking way they should know, it's as if the queen told them that eating the bait is bad.

So I poisoned their nest, and they have been pushing the soil away because they "know" it's contaminated.

It's creeping me out. How can they be this smart? Even humans aren't this smart.

>>8129824
Weird, too bad you can't harness them somehow. They are pretty smart for insects.

>>8129769
The real question here is, "How smart are you, OP?"

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>>8129769

>>8129827
you're imputing human things onto the ants
>scout ant goes towards where poison is
>leaves chemical trail for other ants to follow
>brings back "food" aka poison
>dies soon after
>other ants avoid her chemical signals
>if enough scouts in a certain area die ants just avoid it entirely

similarly with the soil. it's not a rational thought so much as it avoidance. its like with people and touching a hot stove. maybe the first time you touch the stove you aren't sure what the problem is, but burn your fingers enough (or sacrifice enough scout ants) and you'll just avoid it entirely and try to make it go away.

>>8129836
Ah I suppose, so they function as a super organism or jelly fish deal?

It's still pretty amazing. I would leave them alone if they weren't building a fucking metropolis. Their hive must be gigantic because they never seem to run out of troops and they have spread to several other people's yards.

>>8129827
Ants are basically tiny scientists with individual IQs so low they are not worth noting, but if you added them all up you have an intelligent science machine with an IQ of something like 20 or 30. Sorry for using meaningless values, but it's all I could come up with.

>>8129844
pretty amazing honestly, it's as if they are talking to each other.

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I'm not the only person thinking about engineering ants into larger more territorially aggressive monsters with tendencies towards farming and gathering when they are not conquering, and then shooting these abominations at planets we don't care about so that they gather up all the organic resources, right? And after that we just exploit their congregating instinct to bring them into some kind of vat to retrieve all the resources.

>>8129866
Totally dude.

What would win the sun or a sun-mass of ants?

Pour boiling water into the nest.

>>8129875
Ants, the ants would collectively realize the sun is too hot to bury into or eat, and then move the great ant mass around it and continue searching for another world to devour. Eventually, the sun will die, but ants are an eternal scourge upon the universe.

>>8129866
This can't possibly backfire!

>>8129827
I have never had a problem with the delayed poisoned bait that they bring back to the nest and feed to their queen.

It takes a couple weeks before they're all gone though.

>>8129895
I tried that, she must have an iron stomach because they have been living with me for a few years. When I mow my lawn the grass shimmers from thousands of them, but they won't come inside the house anymore so I don't really care.

>>8129894
It's not about how well it will work, or work against us, what matters is how we as a species are remembered in the intergalactic annals of history. Will we be remembered as an incredibly mediocre strain of warm blooded sapient life? Or will we die as the most ingenious and bloodthirsty conquerors the universe has ever known?

>>8129895
>>8129899
I would think the poison just isn't getting all the way to the queen, you'll have to try something different as I'll bet they know how all the different poisons smell by now, at least until all of the one's who smelled poison are dead.

http://www.livescience.com/10635-queen-ant-sacrifice-colony-retain-throne.html

>>8129916
Oh shit they've invented politics, collapse of human dominance when?

>>8129899
>>8129911

It could be possible that you have multiple separate colonies and only managed to wipe out some of them. If this were the case the poison should work on the others.

Have you ever seen them fighting?

>>8129956
No, it seems to be a giant colony. They are black ants.

>>8129973
They may still fight one another, regardless of their species.

An ant's have a hive mind. The colony is their brain. The behavior of individual ants in the colony is similar to how neurons function inside our brains. I'm not even making this shit up. It's said that ants would have destroyed every living creature on this planet already if it weren't for them fighting among each other. They also say the entire country of brazil is one large ant colony.

I have to wonder, how far behind us are they? Intellecually wise? I mean right now they're killing each off kinda how we did a few centuries ago. Will they be able to someday have human level intelligence if their hive mind grows large enough?

>>8129987
>off kinda how we did a few centuries ago

You dont read much news, dont ya?

>>8129769
Gas them with gasoline

>>8129987
One might describe it as human level intelligence, but it would certainly be something other than human intelligence. Thankfully, a massive hive would be much slower than a human brain as the communication between the "neurons" is nigh infinitely slower than electric pulses. Once ants evolve to communicate through that method, then we're doomed.

>>8129999
what happens if they invent google fiber?

seriously tho, they can create castes with specific fuction within the colony. Like the honey pot ants. Or in my house we have a large colony living in the yard and in the yard they're normal sized but they have TINY ants the sized of aphids that crawl through the cracks of the house to get food inside. THEY MADE A CASTE TO INFILTRATE MY HOME! Why can't they make a new cast to communicate information very rapidly.

>>8129836
>other ants avoid her chemical signals
uh... how do they know that's the source of poison?

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Boiology

>>8130029

Impulses typically travel along neurons at a speed of anywhere from 1 to 120 meters per second, so that would need to be a seriously aerodynamic cast.

Also, the brain is roughly 15 centimeters across, whereas a colony of ants is several orders of magnitude larger.

Maybe with some sort of signaling process they could communicate information rather quickly, but nothing comparable to the human brain.

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>>8129866
> leave them alone
> they secretly develop a space program
> they develop mass destruction weapons
> explore the universe
> find out about earth
> nuke us all
> engineering surviving humans into larger, more territorially aggressive monsters with tendencies toward farming and gathering when they are not conquering
> shoot those abominations at planets they don't care about
> gather up all the organic resources
right?

>>8129832
This guy is asking the right questions

>>8130046
Kek