So, things happen to an ant colony.

So, the ants in the older colony that seem to be more stable are not any older than the ants in the younger colony.

Here for example, is a colony of army ants building a tunnel.

But those ants, even though most of them get wiped out, those ants are the ones that are essential to the survival of the hive.

Some recent discoveries There's an ant colony from Argentina that has now spread to every continent but Antarctica

like a beehive or an ant colony can muster a defence. I'm sure the planet will think of something.

When we talk about bottom up, decentralized phenomena, the ant colony is the classic metaphor, because, no individual ant knows what it's doing, but collectively ants are able to reach incredibly intelligent decisions.

For example, an economy is made up of organisations, which are made up of people, which are made up of cells all of which are complex systems.

So, the ant colony is a great model you have all these little parts that collectively add up to a great thing.

And if you mark ants that are working outside, and dig up a colony, you never see them deep down.

Here's an example of ants building a bridge with their bodies, so that other members of the ant colony can cross the gap between the two leaves.

And I think it's a very interesting question what is there about the way the colony is organized that might give some function to a reserve of ants who are doing nothing?

They are looking at how ants and bees find their food and their flowers in the most effective way as a whole hive.

So it starts out with zero ants, just the founding queen, and it grows to a size of about 10 or 12 thousand ants when the colony is five.

And I know how colony size changes as a function of colony age because I've dug up colonies of known age and counted all the ants.

And I know how colony size changes as a function of colony age because I've dug up colonies of known age and counted all the ants. (Laughter)

There's an ant colony from Argentina that has now spread to every continent but Antarctica there's a self directed robot scientist that's made a discovery soon, science may no longer need us, and life may no longer need us either a microbe wakes up after 120,000 years.

Ants count

Fish count

A count

These ants, are they looking for the queen ant?

and it can tell, for example, whether the other ant is a nest mate because ants cover themselves and each other, through grooming, with a layer of grease, which carries a colony specific odor.

AntInspect

So it's kind of part of the phenomenon I called spontaneous self organization, right, where, like in ant colonies, where little decisions made by on the micro level actually have a big impact on the macro level.

It's part of the phenomenon I called spontaneous self organization, where, like in ant colonies, little decisions made on the micro level actually have a big impact on the macro level.

those poor ants!

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Those poor ants.

Foxes, fireflies, fleas.

The cake was alive with ants.

The cake was crawling with ants.

And I thought, These ants, are they looking for the queen ant?

Here are just two ants, not army ants, a different species. That one is the sister of that one.

But the idea is that the ants are in there, and each ant is experiencing a certain flow of ants past it a stream of contacts with other ants.

People look like ants.

Liometopum is a genus of ants that belongs to the subfamily Dolichoderinae.

Tetramorium is a genus of ants in the subfamily Myrmicinae that includes more than 520 species.

M Like ants?

Initially proposed by Marco Dorigo in 1992 in his PhD thesis, the first algorithm was aiming to search for an optimal path in a graph, based on the behavior of ants seeking a path between their colony and a source of food.

And I was working in the context of a view of ant colonies in which each ant was somehow dedicated to its task from birth and sort of performed independently of the others, knowing its place on the assembly line.

He tried to get rid of the ants.