Ant intelligence (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, September 08, 2013, 17:13 (3884 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Back to ants: Are you telling us that your God sits there directing operations by remote control, or are you telling us that he provided a mechanism which would enable all his creatures to work out their own strategies as and when the different situations arise? Would you not agree that working out a strategy, and the decision of one ant to sacrifice itself as part of that strategy, both constitute evidence of intelligent thought?-DAVID: I have described the mechanism in my previus entry. it applies to ants as well as to cells. The ants are programmed to do their jobs and their societal roles. The intelligent thought is in planning DNA to create the instinctual behavior which then is almost completely automatic.-I like the word "almost". Please tell us which part of the behaviour of ants and cells is NOT automatic, and why you think that part of their behaviour still does not constitute intelligent thought.