Natures wonders: ant rafts and towers (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, July 17, 2017, 08:55 (2684 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "The team’s previous research on ant rafts showed how, although no one is in charge and no ant can see the big picture, simple behavioural rules can lead to the creation of a resilient structure. The same rules guide the construction of the tower, with the added limitation of how much weight an ant can support." ( David’s bold)
David’s comment: that seems to settle the issue. Individual ant responses due to instinctual individual behaviour builds the structures.

QUOTE: The sinking was confirmed by X-ray videography. The researchers fed some of the ants radioactive food, then threw the colony in an X-ray machine across campus in Professor Dan Goldman's physics lab. Cameras again recorded the critters building a tower. Using time-lapse photography, they watched the radioactive insects walk up the sides, gradually sink to the tower's depths, leave the pile, then continually repeat the process for hours."
David’s comment: A very solid study. The colony is not one giant brain.

TONY: Perhaps more importantly, does this mechanism allow for a sort of shift work cycle that allows ants to rest. They start at the top, taking little strain, building up to taking their share of the distributed weight of the full tower, then get a break as they exit into the tunnels, probably grab a bite to eat, and then go back for another shift.
DAVID: Good point. Hadn't thought of it but it makes complete sense.

It does indeed make complete sense. What doesn’t make sense is the idea that these organisms don’t know what they’re doing (“instinctual behaviour”…”not one giant brain”). How did these marvellous feats of engineering originate? Do you think your God gave the first raft/tower builders personal lessons, or preprogrammed the first cells to pass on instructions to the first ants a few thousand million years later? I suggest that cooperating ants provide an analogy to cooperating cells: by pooling their intelligence they devise solutions which they would be incapable of finding on their own. The colony may not BE one giant brain, but the product of their cooperation is the same as that of a giant brain, and the brain itself is also a mass of cooperating individual units. Over and over again your natural wonders demonstrate the intelligent, inventive behaviour of the respective organisms, but you can never bring yourself to accept that this might have ORIGINATED through their own inventive (perhaps God-given) intelligence.