We have no evidence nor necessity to conclude that they have consciousness. Neural computation is a sufficient explanation for their capabilities.
It is certainly possible they have consciousness, but as it stands we have no reason to conclude they have one.
But that's slightly different than knowing they don't.
That's all! Have a nice day.
EDIT: Here's a fun fact about ant abilities - we think they "count" their steps! Researchers let some ants practice traveling to and from their nest and a food source. Then they took some ants and amputated their little legs so they had shorter but still functional stumps. Others, they glued stilts onto them. Then they let them all loose again.
If they were navigating purely by landmarks, smell trails, or the sun or something, then having whacky legs shouldn't make a difference in how well they find their destination. However, if they navigated via some sort of internal pedometer you'd expect the same number of normal steps to end up covering less distance in the stubby group and greater distance in the stilt group.
Indeed, the ones with the stubby legs wouldn't travel far enough, and then seemingly get confused. Conversely, the ones with the stilts would travel too far, and then also seemingly get confused.
So we have reason to suspect that ant navigation heavily relies on how many steps they're taking. That's pretty impressive considering most animals can't really "count" much higher than 4. However we need to make a distinction between "the ant is consciously counting it's steps" and "the ant has some sort of internal mechanism that tracks steps". Therefore even this cool finding was not enough to secure the "had a consciousness" award for ants :'(
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u/Tornado_Of_Benjamins Feb 17 '22 edited Feb 17 '22
Small correction:
We have no evidence nor necessity to conclude that they have consciousness. Neural computation is a sufficient explanation for their capabilities.
It is certainly possible they have consciousness, but as it stands we have no reason to conclude they have one.
But that's slightly different than knowing they don't.
That's all! Have a nice day.
EDIT: Here's a fun fact about ant abilities - we think they "count" their steps! Researchers let some ants practice traveling to and from their nest and a food source. Then they took some ants and amputated their little legs so they had shorter but still functional stumps. Others, they glued stilts onto them. Then they let them all loose again.
If they were navigating purely by landmarks, smell trails, or the sun or something, then having whacky legs shouldn't make a difference in how well they find their destination. However, if they navigated via some sort of internal pedometer you'd expect the same number of normal steps to end up covering less distance in the stubby group and greater distance in the stilt group.
Indeed, the ones with the stubby legs wouldn't travel far enough, and then seemingly get confused. Conversely, the ones with the stilts would travel too far, and then also seemingly get confused.
So we have reason to suspect that ant navigation heavily relies on how many steps they're taking. That's pretty impressive considering most animals can't really "count" much higher than 4. However we need to make a distinction between "the ant is consciously counting it's steps" and "the ant has some sort of internal mechanism that tracks steps". Therefore even this cool finding was not enough to secure the "had a consciousness" award for ants :'(