Ant intelligence; chemical controls (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, January 03, 2016, 14:11 (3037 days ago) @ David Turell

David's comment: I suspect the colony automatically senses the need to change population dynamics and these chemical changes are also automatic at that point.

dhw: You can also change human physiology and character by injecting chemicals, but in nature there is nobody to inject the ants. They change themselves. Of course you suspect that ants do it automatically. You hate the very idea that small organisms might know what they're doing! -DAVID: We don't change DNA epigenetically by injections of humans. The point of the article is ant have onboard population controls. Why are they present? Did they invent those? Or were they supplied?-Those are indeed the questions we are struggling to answer. And surprise, surprise, I would suggest that the onboard population controls may be the intelligence of the cell communities. That is present because ant intelligence is what enables ants to work out the best way to run their own society, and the source of that intelligence may or may not be your God.