Counting ants
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Counting ants
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Re: Counting ants
#2> This is not about how to count ants but how ants count.
I was disappointed to read this, I tried to figure out in my head how they count ants in the world, and now I'm left with that void...
Edit: After having read the article, I'm not disappointed anymore, this was really interesting!
Re: Counting ants
#3> This is not about how to count ants but how ants count. I was disappointed to read this, I tried to figure out in my head how they count ants in the world, and now I'm left with that void... Edit: After having read the article, I'm not disappointed anymore, this was really interesting!
How to count an ant population:
1. Collect 25 ants
2. Paint a dot on their abdomens
3. Release them
4. Wait
5. Collect 25 ants again
6. Count how many are marked with dots
7. Divide 25² by this number
The result is a pretty good approximation of the size of the total ant population. To increase precision and accuracy, replace all the "25"s above with a larger number.
Re: Counting ants
#4> This is not about how to count ants but how ants count. I was disappointed to read this, I tried to figure out in my head how they count ants in the world, and now I'm left with that void... Edit: After having read the article, I'm not disappointed anymore, this was really interesting!
How to count an ant population: 1. Collect 25 ants 2. Paint a dot on their abdomens 3. Release them 4. Wait 5. Collect 25 ants again 6. Count how many are marked with dots 7. Divide 25² by this number The result is a pretty good approximation of the size of the total ant population. To increase precision and accuracy, replace all the "25"s above with a larger number.
What's this method called?
Re: Counting ants
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
How to count an ant population: 1. Collect 25 ants 2. Paint a dot on their abdomens 3. Release them 4. Wait 5. Collect 25 ants again 6. Count how many are marked with dots 7. Divide 25² by this number The result is a pretty good approximation of the size of the total ant population. To increase precision and accuracy, replace all the "25"s above with a larger number.
What's this method called?
I'm not sure; I think I learned it from Charlie Brown's 'Cyclopedia when I was six. Wherever it was, it was about snails rather than ants; I remember that.
Re: Counting ants
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
How to count an ant population: 1. Collect 25 ants 2. Paint a dot on their abdomens 3. Release them 4. Wait 5. Collect 25 ants again 6. Count how many are marked with dots 7. Divide 25² by this number The result is a pretty good approximation of the size of the total ant population. To increase precision and accuracy, replace all the "25"s above with a larger number.
What's this method called?
Re: Counting ants
#7I find this research a bit suspicious:
1. The authors do not provide a single complete video of the experiment, only very short 5-15 seconds fragments.
2. The papers lack detailed experimental procedures and protocol description (compared to a typical paper from Nature on the same subject).
3. The papers are published in seemingly unrelated journals, which may not have the adequate know-how to do peer review of such experiments: Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence, IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter, etc. If the behavior described is real, it is highly notable, I would expect at least one paper published in Nature by the authors.
4. The only videos available are short fragments, where 1 ant is seen crossing a single (1) left/right branch. Why not film an entire ant path, which according to paper should last about 100-200 seconds?
https://www.youtube.com/user/reznikovazhanna/videos
I also checked both author's pages: http://boris.ryabko.net/papers.html http://reznikova.net/Publications.html
Is this specific counting and communication capability independently confirmed by other research groups?
Re: Counting ants
#8nitpick: the article uses the male pronouns for the worker ants. All ants and bees except for short-lived breeders are female.
Re: Counting ants
#9> This is not about how to count ants but how ants count. I was disappointed to read this, I tried to figure out in my head how they count ants in the world, and now I'm left with that void... Edit: After having read the article, I'm not disappointed anymore, this was really interesting!
How to count an ant population: 1. Collect 25 ants 2. Paint a dot on their abdomens 3. Release them 4. Wait 5. Collect 25 ants again 6. Count how many are marked with dots 7. Divide 25² by this number The result is a pretty good approximation of the size of the total ant population. To increase precision and accuracy, replace all the "25"s above with a larger number.
To count all the ants in the world? Presumably the rub is that you have to wait for all the ants in the world to become "well mixed", which is unlikely to happen before the ants die.