+34 What's amazing is not just that ants know how to build those complex underground cities but how they know when they're done. amirite?

by Jhoeger 4 weeks ago

How do you know that they know they're done?

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

The Queen hosts a big party and hands out awards and medals to all involved,followed by drinking the fermented fungal deposits they've been storing up and then heading over to the next colony for a mass pillaging and fighting for further glory and to show there ungoing loyalty to the queen. Then they're done.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

the ant gind is never done 🔥

by Embarrassed_Box7443 4 weeks ago

Never ceases to amaze me. How do they know anything? Surely not one single individual ant knows what the overall outcome will be exactly, each ant is just the tiniest part of it, building from scratch, rebuilding, repairing, the lifecycle is tiny in context of every individual ant colony being a unique in time and place civilisation. Yet they all know exactly what they are doing and how to behave they are hatched. Or before, actually. Hive mind, yet we still don't know how. Or do we, Iay have missed that class 🫠

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Do we not do the same? No one human knows the end goal of civilization, but we're all just kind of working together to get there. In that light, I wouldn't say there is really a plan for the ant hill, it's just a product of all the little ants' decisions put together. It's what you get when you throw a bunch of little ants into one place, rather than an end goal that each ant has its own part of already coded into them.

by Positive-Common 4 weeks ago

I won't be impressed with Ant cities until they get a decent tram system

by kturcotte 4 weeks ago

Give it time

by Jhoeger 4 weeks ago

Local units obeying local rules. The structure we see at the end emerges from the individual ants just following their instincts in their own little space, not from some grand design.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Ants pull permits too.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

DIY dad ant always fixing some dirt chamber up

by ReadHaunting5802 4 weeks ago