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Ant colony discovered in an abandoned Polish nuclear weapons bunker

arstechnica.com

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Re: Ant colony discovered in an abandoned Polish nuclear weapons bunker

#91

Post by camperman »

mbajkowski wrote: post #22
Applejinx wrote: post #12

"The continued survival of the ‘colony’ through the years is dependent on new workers falling in through the ventilation pipe. The supplement of workers more than compensates for the mortality rate of workers such that through the years the bunker workforce has grown to the level of big, mature natural colonies." For heaven's sake someone hide this article before Jeff Bezos reads it :)

i have no idea why, but this comment just made my Friday

It made mine because I laughed so suddenly and violently that I spat coffee onto the screen.

Re: Ant colony discovered in an abandoned Polish nuclear weapons bunker

#92

Post by flycaliguy »

elihu wrote: post #51

It's interesting that given the collective problem solving skills of ants, that they are apparently unable to figure out not to fall into a hole. I wonder if they just fall through by random chance, or if there was some ant at some point that left a "hey guys, there's food down here" pheromone trail, and all the ants that came after just reinforced it into an ant super-highway. If no one ever comes back to say "actua…

"Every year when the nest expands, thousands of worker ants fall down the pipe and cannot climb back out."

This sentence led me to believe that there is some sort of annual expansion event that disturbs the structure of the colony and sends a new load down.

Re: Ant colony discovered in an abandoned Polish nuclear weapons bunker

#93

Post by Noseshine »

mariusz79 wrote: post #20
ph0rque wrote: post #8

It's possible they have figured out how to eat the creatures who feast in their cemeteries, essentially making them cannibals at one remove. In that case, all living things are cannibals at several removes: animals -> decomposing bacteria -> plants -> animals

Yeah. Like I'm a second-hand vegan. I eat animals that eat plants :)

And we all feed off delicious electromagnetic waves...

Re: Ant colony discovered in an abandoned Polish nuclear weapons bunker

#94

Post by Noseshine »

ethbro wrote: post #64
yk wrote: post #15

Ants starving in the dark, damp pit of an abandoned nuclear bunker. Sometimes I love the cyberpunk dystopia we live in.

To be fair, it doesn't say they're radioactive. The 80s would be disappointed.

Why would it be? It's a bunker against radiation and fallout. I would not expect the builders to put radiation in it, that would quite defeat the purpose.

Re: Ant colony discovered in an abandoned Polish nuclear weapons bunker

#95

Post by lnanek2 »

gesman wrote: post #68

So i wonder if some kind human soul would just throw a solid rope, long enough to reach the bottom from the surface to help poor species? Ants are like "WTF humans! F * your studies, help us already!"

Wouldn't the ants just eat the rope? They don't have the intelligence to know not to eat it and that it is more valuable to leave intact for climbing back up later after falling.

Re: Ant colony discovered in an abandoned Polish nuclear weapons bunker

#96

Post by ajmurmann »

Terribledactyl wrote: post #72
elihu wrote: post #51

It's interesting that given the collective problem solving skills of ants, that they are apparently unable to figure out not to fall into a hole. I wonder if they just fall through by random chance, or if there was some ant at some point that left a "hey guys, there's food down here" pheromone trail, and all the ants that came after just reinforced it into an ant super-highway. If no one ever comes back to say "actua…

There are a bunch of really intelligent looking behaviors from insects, but they seem to have a common theme of "storing" information in the environment. There is a hornet that will sweep and search its nest when it brings food back, but first it will place the food down. If you move the food while the search is going on, it will do the whole search over again when it goes out searching for food. The intelligent beha…

I wonder if we humans have similar obvious weaknesses or take similar shortcuts that we are completely unaware of.

Re: Ant colony discovered in an abandoned Polish nuclear weapons bunker

#100

Post by intended »

macintux wrote: post #45

Can't believe I'm the first person in this comment stream to say it, but: doesn't this piece feel like a real-world Dwarf Fortress?

Ugh. Real life + Dwaf fortress should pretty much never intersect.

Now I feel sympathy for the ants and hope they develop their own versions of retracting drawbridges and levers till they pierce the roof.

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