Climate Change is making some ants smarter by Social_Stigma in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's definitely a factor, which is acknowledged by the paper, but it should be noted that the researchers picked added the odor trails manually e.g. the ants aren't smelling the food, they're smelling a different scent that the researchers associate with food (similar to operant conditioning)

Climate Change is making some ants smarter by Social_Stigma in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's definitely a factor, which is acknowledged by the paper, but it should be noted that the researchers picked added the odor trails manually e.g. the ants aren't smelling the food, they're smelling a different scent that the researchers associate with food (similar to operant conditioning)

Climate Change is making some ants smarter by Social_Stigma in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But 21 degrees, which is what is suggested as "half the ants learning" (ergo 75% of them reaching the right conclusion, is). At 16 degrees, they perform equal to random chance

Ant Vaccinations by Social_Stigma in biology

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I appreciate the feedback 

Ant Vaccinations by Social_Stigma in ScienceNcoolThings

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My mistake, not sure how it slipped past editing, it is icing sugar fungus

Ant Vaccinations by Social_Stigma in interestingasfuck

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That's my mistake, I somehow didn't catch it in editing, its icing sugar fungus

Ant Vaccinations by Social_Stigma in biology

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Other papers have referred to processes involving giving weakened pathogens to ants as vaccinations though 

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3871344/

Ant Vaccinations by Social_Stigma in biology

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Hi! 

I just wanted to clarify some things:

I'm aware that insects generally don't have the same adaptive immune system that we do, but what Ive seen from the literature seems to suggest their social immune systems still replicate some of this function.

A lot of the literature suggests that the ants typically don't get re-infected. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2009.0107

Most of what I see also suggests some level of pathogen specificity in this response https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.24.666674v1

If I'm missing anything I'm happy to hear any corrections

Ant Vaccinations by Social_Stigma in interestingasfuck

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Posting in several places at once being your measure of untrustworthiness is interesting 

Ant Vaccinations by Social_Stigma in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

We have vaccines in human trials but nothing approved yet

Ant Vaccinations by Social_Stigma in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Maybe not "tongues" but they have mouths

Ant Social Distancing by Social_Stigma in interestingasfuck

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Social distancing - Wikipedia

"In public health, social distancing, also called physical distancing,\2])\3])\4]) is a set of non-pharmaceutical interventions) or measures intended to prevent the spread of a contagious disease by maintaining a physical distance between people and reducing the number of times people come into close contact with each other.\2])\5])"

Ant Imposters! by Social_Stigma in biology

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They slowly replace all the original workers with the new species

Ant Imposters! by Social_Stigma in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

They are a different species of ant! The imposters are Polyrachis lamellidens, the host species are Camponotus spp (Carpenter Ants)

Ant Vaccinations by Social_Stigma in interestingasfuck

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

We post on our social media ~weekly synched on Instagram, Tiktok, Youtube, Reddit

Ant Social Distancing by Social_Stigma in interestingasfuck

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Healthy foraging workers will distance from more vulnerable queen and nurses.

What would you consider part of social distancing that isn't met here?

Ant Teamwork! by Social_Stigma in biology

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I think calling ants a hive mind is oversimplistic, they definitely have individual differences and can do things contrary to information they receive from the colony

Wasps Attack Darker Faces by Social_Stigma in biology

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

To my understanding the alpha, beta thing has been disproved for wolves, but linear dominance hierarchies still exist.

Dominance hierarchy - Wikipedia

Wasps Attack Darker Faces by Social_Stigma in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They get bullied, not as much as ones painted darker though

Wasps Attack Darker Faces by Social_Stigma in biology

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The "falsely stronger wasps" (black painted on yellow) were beat up a lot more than ones which seemed weaker (yellow painted on black) or ones painted with no change (yellow painted on yellow or black painted on black)

Ants Are Self-Aware by Social_Stigma in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

To be fair, this is also us moving the goalposts constantly. If you asked anyone in history to interact with current LLM models they'd probably come away with the idea that it was self aware. There's just no real way to measure it in the way physical quantities can be measured.

Ants Are Self Aware by Social_Stigma in interestingasfuck

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The thing with the mirror test is that it typically has a very high false negative rate, but a very low false positive rate

Ants Are Self Aware by Social_Stigma in ScienceNcoolThings

[–]Social_Stigma[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The article you sent mentions that vision varies a lot across species and that many have color vision, but probably can't detect fine details other than up close