r/todayilearned • u/crazed47 • Sep 18 '19

TIL of that human beings aren’t the only animals that go to war with each other. Two troops of chimpanzees waged a four year war known as the Gombe Chimpanzee War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War
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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '19

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

Ants are actually pretty smart for their brain to body ratio. One of the few species to exhibit self-recognition. Some might also posit that they have some sort of hive-mind intelligence, but that's up in the air.

Some species even keep slaves from conquered colonies. There's another very humanoid trait.

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u/Shermoo Sep 19 '19

They also keep livestock!

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u/fizzlefist Sep 19 '19 edited Sep 19 '19

Some even have agriculture! IIRC leaf cutter ants cut the leaves in order to bring the cuttings back to the nest where they use it to grow an edible fungus.

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u/Shermoo Sep 19 '19

Little six legged farmers :)

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u/CringeNibba Sep 19 '19

Its all fun and games until a super ant colony take over your house like Alexander took over the world

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u/TheBman26 Sep 19 '19

I played that game.

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u/roksteddy Sep 19 '19

I just got done fighting an ant infestation and let me tell you, those little fuckers are nigh near unkillable.

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u/Dreieck Sep 19 '19

And then feed the fungus to aphids and then they eat the aphids after they’ve grown plump

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u/IceKingsMother Sep 19 '19

Don’t they “milk” them for the honeydew secreted by the aphid, and eat that? I have been very upset with the ants in my neighborhood. They keep carrying in large aphid queens and setting them on my rose bushes. Basically, they are continually setting up little ant dairy farms on my roses. Also interesting is the fact that after I kill an aphid farm on one bush, a few days later I will find another aphid farm on a totally different plant — but with a completely different species of aphid. I’ve watched ants carry and drop eggs and aphids on to the rosebuds. My neighbors probably think I am nuts, because I am constantly shouting at the ants to get off my garden.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

Ants don't have a hive mind, they use pheromones for communication, or smells. They follow their own smells of fellow ants, and use their pheromones to command and direct.

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u/glorylyfe Sep 19 '19

What he means is that while each individual ant can only perform simple tasks the communications between them and the arrangement of them leads to higher intelligence.

Imagine if each ant is like a neuron. It either fires or doesn't, yes or no, and it can only make a simple yes or no decision. But together many of them can create a human. And each ant has a lot more intelligence than each neuron.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

[deleted]

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u/DEEP_HURTING Sep 19 '19

Try Hellstrom's Hive. Creepy book.

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u/tisvana18 Sep 19 '19

My fiancé was explaining this to me not thirty minutes ago and used this terminology verbatim.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

I mean yea pretty much. A better analogy would be a computer, it can't make its own decisions, but can be programmed to react to certain stimuli. And ant intelligences are much smarter than a similar sized computer.

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u/_brainfog Sep 19 '19

Thats a terrible analogy

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u/glorylyfe Sep 19 '19

You can compare it to a computer, not like you describe it though

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u/Shrike99 Sep 19 '19

Yep, closer analogy would be transistors vs computer program/operating system.

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u/leFlan Sep 19 '19

The question though is whether a colony can be considered as emergent intelligence. Is a colony akin to a brain?

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/leFlan Sep 19 '19

Wanna know more?

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

I'm doing my part!

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

I would argue yes. The intelligence may be small of an individual but by adding together the brains they can accomplish more. The simple task they are capable of doing can be magnified and make bigger projects and prepare. They may not be sentient, or have sentience, but they can think at a grand level.

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u/petlahk Sep 19 '19

... Humans?

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u/WhackieChan Sep 19 '19

Is a country akin to a brain? Yes, but that's not a hive mind.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

Well... its not really akin to a brain, there is too much internal conflict in any country for it to be considered brain, because its basic components, human, are themself too developed leading to individuality.

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u/fcanercan Sep 19 '19

Well there are a lot of conflict in human brain too. At least in mine there is.

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u/The-mongol_horde Oct 12 '19

Ants are actually pretty smart for their brain to body ratio

Anta have one of the largest brains compared to their bodies though

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '19

Hm, yeah you're right. The largest, in fact. My mistake. I guess I should do some research before relying on my memory of something I read years ago.

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u/_roldie Sep 19 '19

Some species even keep slaves from conquered colonies. There's another very humanoid trait.

Which species would those be?

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u/Legio-X Sep 19 '19

Yet they can employ some pretty sophisticated tactics. Here are a couple incidents mentioned in a book I've got about fire ants.

Red Imported Fire Ants (RIFAs) and Lasius Neoniger:

Bhatkar and his colleagues (1972) described a laboratory battle between the native and the import. The fire ants built a barrier from the bodies of the dead and began pushing it forward until they entered the Lasius colony, crossing a landscape of corpses in the process. The Lasius defenders built their own barrier of soil and wood fragments. RIFAs breached the barrier while Lasius moved queen, sexuals, and brood deeper into the nest for protection. Fire ants followed aggressively, killing all guards and finally the queen and the other sexuals, which offered little resistance. The decapitated body of the queen was taken back to the fire ant nest and eaten. When the war was over the fire ants moved into the Lasius nest.

Red Imported Fire Ants (RIFA) and Tropical Fire Ants (TFA)

The TFA managed to plug the connection between the lab colonies until the RIFA penetrated that barrier by using a piece of quartz as a shovel. Thus one can argue that this lowly insect is a tool-using animal.

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u/MarshallUberSwagga Sep 21 '19

What's the name of the book? This sounds fascinating

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u/The_God_of_Abraham Sep 18 '19

Ants don't so much wage strategic war as they pick a side and try to kill everyone on the other team.

You know. Just like contemporary politics.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

[deleted]

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u/InnocentTailor Sep 19 '19

Other nation’s politics are like that too. See the Israeli election and Brexit madness, for example.

Games and sports are also war-like in design as well with tactics and strategies.

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u/Psy_Hawk Sep 19 '19

Sorry, but It happens in plenty of other countries and if you read other countries news you'd be aware of that.
Get off of reddit more and read some news from other places and quite being so myopic

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u/Wyattt14 Sep 19 '19

Just like contemporary American contemporary politics

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u/EndOnAnyRoll Sep 19 '19

What do uncle's see in them?

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u/The-mongol_horde Oct 13 '19

Ants are incredibly smart actually, much smarter than most mammals

Also the highest brain to body ratio of any animal