 
                        Artificial Life Digest, Number 3
 
                             Friday, March 9th 1990
 
Issue's Topics:
 
                                    army ants
                                    army ants
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 90 12:25 PST
From: Craig W. Reynolds <cwr@white.sww.symbolics.com>
Subject: army ants

Back on February 17th, Rudy Rucker asked about Artificial Life studies of
ants.  Several people contributed literature citations on real ants, and I
wanted to add one more.  Later Rucker asked "why ants?" and Mike Travers
(creator of AGAR, an animal construction kit (demoed at ALife II)) replied:

    Date: Mon, 19 Feb 90 23:34 EST
    From: Michael Travers <mt@media-lab.media.mit.edu>
    
    ...I'm interested in modeling cooperative behavior in general, and ants
    were a good place to start...

(Similarly, my interest in cooperative behavior lead me to work on flocks.)
    
    ...In my modeling system, there is a loose but aesthetically pleasing
    similarity between the group behavior of ants and the group behavior of
    the behavioral modules (agents) within a single ant brain...

This theme, and the emergence of complex behavior from independent agents
linked by communication, are discussed in a very readable article a year
ago:

 "Army Ants: A Collective Intelligence" by Nigel R. Franks
 in American Scientist, March-April 1989, pages 138-145.

 Author's address: Nigel R. Franks, School of Biological Sciences,
 University  of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath, BA2 7AY, England.

The article includes a lot of entomological information about the life
cycle of army ants, describes some computer simulations of their foraging
behavior, and discusses the view of an ant colony as a single organism.  An
organism capable of some rather astounding collective behaviors.  About the
the "intellectual capacity" of an ant colony he remarks:

 "The processing power of the human brain is the result of the wiring
 together of 100,000,000,000 neurons, one of which alone could not
 process the simplest thought.  Similarly, problem solving by army ant
 colonies is achieved through communication among some 500,000 workers,
 each of which has fewer than 100,000 neurons."

I couldn't help but carry out the multiplication and note that such an ant
colony would have just about half as many neurons as a human being.

------------------------------
 
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 90 16:31 EST
From: Allan C. Wechsler <ACW@yukon.scrc.symbolics.com>
Subject: army ants

    Date: Thu, 8 Mar 90 12:25 PST
    From: Craig W. Reynolds <cwr@WHITE.SWW.Symbolics.COM>

    Back on February 17th, Rudy Rucker asked about Artificial Life studies of
    ants.  Several people contributed literature citations on real ants, and I
    wanted to add one more.  Later Rucker asked "why ants?" and Mike Travers
    (creator of AGAR, an animal construction kit (demoed at ALife II)) replied:

	Date: Mon, 19 Feb 90 23:34 EST
	From: Michael Travers <mt@media-lab.media.mit.edu>
    
	...I'm interested in modeling cooperative behavior in general, and ants
	were a good place to start...

    (Similarly, my interest in cooperative behavior lead me to work on flocks.)
    
	...In my modeling system, there is a loose but aesthetically pleasing
	similarity between the group behavior of ants and the group behavior of
	the behavioral modules (agents) within a single ant brain...

    This theme, and the emergence of complex behavior from independent agents
    linked by communication, are discussed in a very readable article a year
    ago:

     "Army Ants: A Collective Intelligence" by Nigel R. Franks
     in American Scientist, March-April 1989, pages 138-145.

     Author's address: Nigel R. Franks, School of Biological Sciences,
     University  of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath, BA2 7AY, England.

    The article includes a lot of entomological information about the life
    cycle of army ants, describes some computer simulations of their foraging
    behavior, and discusses the view of an ant colony as a single organism.  An
    organism capable of some rather astounding collective behaviors.  About the
    the "intellectual capacity" of an ant colony he remarks:

     "The processing power of the human brain is the result of the wiring
     together of 100,000,000,000 neurons, one of which alone could not
     process the simplest thought.  Similarly, problem solving by army ant
     colonies is achieved through communication among some 500,000 workers,
     each of which has fewer than 100,000 neurons."

    I couldn't help but carry out the multiplication and note that such an ant
    colony would have just about half as many neurons as a human being.

Hofstadter flamed on and on about the anthill analogy in GEBaEGB.  There
was a whole dialog about Aunt Hillary.

Even though an ant colony has a rank-10 neuron count, like ours, the
synapse speed is between 2 and 4 orders of magnitude slower.  So our
"event rate" has rank 13 or so, while the anthill's is about rank 10.
You would have to replay a film of an anthill with a rank-3 speedup in
order to see it "thinking".

Has anybody filmed ants with that kind of time-lapse?


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