Emergence

Quotes

Superorganism mind

Posted September 2nd, 2021. (Permalink)
Cataloged under Nature, Insects, Emergence and Thinking

I think the assumption of a high degree of common interest is important to this idea of a superorganism, the expectation that it acts as a unitary, cognitive entity. In other societies where the integration is not as tight, it might be less fruitful to treat them as a single mind.

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Obviously, there are a lot of differences between insect societies and human societies. If we find commonalities in how they behave, maybe that’s revealing.

Myrmecologist quote

Posted August 31st, 2021. (Permalink)
Cataloged under Emergence, Memory, Ants, Insects and Myrmecology

The Finnish myrmecologist Rainer Rosengren showed that when the ants emerge in the spring, an older ant goes out with a young one along the older ant’s habitual trail. The older ant dies and the younger ant adopts that trail as its own, thus leading the colony to remember, or reproduce, the previous year’s trails.