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Researchers Find 3,600-mile Ant Supercolony
darnellmc writes "Usually ants from different colonies fight till the death, but according to this article one group of ants from different queens work together. Resulting in the largest ant supercolony yet discovered. This supercolony reaches from the Italian Riviera along the coastline to northwest Spain. Probably not an the ideal location for a cookout considering this new find. This is the kind of think that used to be science fiction."
I wonder though; the latency of communication between the extreme ends of the colony must be so high that it's a stretch to say that they're cooperating.. do the actions of an ant at the extreme west edge affect anything that happens at the extreme east edge in an informationally sensitive way? If not, then while they may be a "supercolony" in that even members of the extremes will tolerate each other if artificially brought into proximity, it's harder to argue that they're cooperatively working together in the way a single ant nest does. But that would depend on the details of the forthcoming article..for instance, if the shape of the supercolony maximizes the "elimination of 90 percent of the other types of ants" that normally live nearby, that might be a qualitatively different behavior from a conventional ant colony that could be interpreted as intelligent.
But this is scary...while reading the article, I looked up from my monitor, and saw..an ant crawling up the wall! And I've never seen one here before!
The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something; for the box might even be empty.