Ant colony discovered in an abandoned Polish nuclear weapons bunker

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/bizarre-ant-colony-discovered-in-an-abandoned-polish-nuclear-weapons-bunker

by kartD • 10 years ago

266 110 10 years ago

So, how are they reproducing? I was under the impression that only the queens are fertile; are ants just long-lived enough that they can maintain their numbers through the periodic addition of ants falling through the hole?

mariusz792• 10 years ago

RTFA

pavel_lishin4• 10 years ago

Ah, so it is 100% maintained by new ants falling through every year. I had no idea individual ants could live for over a year!

sctb• 10 years ago

No matter what the original commenter has said, the guidelines ask you not to do this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

DanBC• 10 years ago

The paper's conclusion reads like a dystopian science fiction scene from the 1970s:
> The wood-ant ‘colony’ described here – although superficially looking like a functioning colony with workers teeming on the surface of the mound – is rather an example of survival of a large amount of workers trapped within a hostile environment in total darkness, with constantly low temperatures and no ample supply of food. The continued survival of the ‘colony’ through the years is dependent on new workers falling in through the ventilation pipe. The supplement of workers more than compensates for the mortality rate of workers such that through the years the bunker workforce has grown to the level of big, mature natural colonies.

stuart78• 10 years ago

It will be interesting to see how this might change in the decades to come. Will they find a way to evolve into a "real" colony? Will they find a way to sustain without reliance on "new arrivals"?

Semi-off-topic, those pictures will haunt my dreams.

Sanddancer• 10 years ago

There are no queens. Therefore, all the ants are from "outside" and there's no chance for a mutation to develop for this pseudocolony to become a real colony.

jpcosta• 10 years ago

eventually the pile of dead ants will be so high that it will reach the top of the vent putting an end to this madness

ph0rque• 10 years ago

It's possible they have figured out how to eat the creatures who feast in their cemeteries, essentially making them cannibals at one remove.

In that case, all living things are cannibals at several removes: animals -> decomposing bacteria -> plants -> animals

mariusz792• 10 years ago

Yeah. Like I'm a second-hand vegan. I eat animals that eat plants :)

aneidon• 10 years ago

reminds me of Erlich Bachman in Silicon Valley, who is a pesca-pescatarian. "I only eat fish that eats other fish"

TheSpiceIsLife2• 10 years ago

A vegan-once-removed.

I'm the omnivorous first cousin of my vegan self.

Noseshine2• 10 years ago

And we all feed off delicious electromagnetic waves...

whybroke• 10 years ago

Even though not cannibalistic, what pigs are typically fed makes a disturbingly tightly loop even.

gnode• 10 years ago

The link is pointing to the comments section of the article.

UnoriginalGuy• 10 years ago

Yep. Please mod remove "?comments=1" from the end.

earlyriser• 10 years ago

It's almost poetic how from the ruins of the collapsed human socialist era, other species are creating a truly communist colony.

sammydavis• 10 years ago

Ha, the queen doesn't see it that way.

throwanem3• 10 years ago

They have no queen.

gumby2• 10 years ago

Well the queen isn't really the top of the hierarchy as she would be in a human colony. She's simply one who has a particular job (reproduction) and thus greater needs. Not really any different from any of the other ants.

dmix4• 10 years ago

As others have pointed out there isn't really a social hierarchy among ants. Their a mostly decentralized autonomous colonies. The only real hierarchy is who gets to walk on top of others in a tunnel, which it usually the workers going back outside walking over the younger ones who aren't old enough to leave yet.

Varinius• 10 years ago

As someone who was born in the crappy part of communist Yugoslavia, I can confirm: slowly starving to death in a dark, abandoned nuclear bunker is an apt metaphor.

Applejinx• 10 years ago

"The continued survival of the ‘colony’ through the years is dependent on new workers falling in through the ventilation pipe. The supplement of workers more than compensates for the mortality rate of workers such that through the years the bunker workforce has grown to the level of big, mature natural colonies."

For heaven's sake someone hide this article before Jeff Bezos reads it :)

mbajkowski• 10 years ago

i have no idea why, but this comment just made my Friday

camperman• 10 years ago

It made mine because I laughed so suddenly and violently that I spat coffee onto the screen.

ff10• 10 years ago

Geez

But there are parallels to certain human anxieties... ants falling into limbo, where certain death awaits you and the supply of poor souls never run out. If you listen closely you can hear their screams and their agony and despair from having no purpose.

deforciant• 10 years ago

Researchers should end this madness and free the ants. I don't think that those ants are happy :/ :(

pavel_lishin4• 10 years ago

Do ants have enough neurons to experience happiness or unhappiness?

criddell• 10 years ago

Collectively? Maybe...

Drdrdrq• 10 years ago

Exactly. This is not a colony, it is prison for ants, where they basically starve to death. They should just lower some wire through the shaft and free them, anything else is cruel.

wruza• 10 years ago

http://www.peta.org/about-peta/contact-peta/report-cruelty/

pkamb• 10 years ago

Or introduce a Queen?

ethbro4• 10 years ago

How would "more ants" be a solution to "everyone is starving"? :(

Fifer82• 10 years ago

I agree :(

yk• 10 years ago

Ants starving in the dark, damp pit of an abandoned nuclear bunker. Sometimes I love the cyberpunk dystopia we live in.

ethbro4• 10 years ago

To be fair, it doesn't say they're radioactive. The 80s would be disappointed.

Noseshine2• 10 years ago

Why would it be? It's a bunker against radiation and fallout. I would not expect the builders to put radiation in it, that would quite defeat the purpose.

andrewclunn• 10 years ago

Now there's an excellent "penal colony gone horribly wrong" sci-fi story there.

m_eiman• 10 years ago

So it's Australia, for ants!

truth_sentinell2• 10 years ago

What does Australia have to do with this? I wanna know.

hawski• 10 years ago

It reminds me of the movie Pandorum - http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1188729/

ptrincr• 10 years ago

Entirely female population?

This sounds somewhat familiar. Life finds a way.....

CaptSpify• 10 years ago

I thought ant workers were typically females, or am I thinking of bees...?

ajuc3• 10 years ago

both

jrapdx3• 10 years ago

Applies to both bees, and ants. (And related species, wasps, hornets, et. al.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymenoptera

SSLy• 10 years ago

Seksmisja

ajuc3• 10 years ago

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088083/

p1mrx• 10 years ago

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Void_(Star_Trek:_Voyager)

noobermin2• 10 years ago

Literally the first thought I had too. Talk about a void in the real world, but for ants.

darrelld2• 10 years ago

I don't understand why they can't climb out? You would think after a few days one ant would find the ceiling and climb back up the shaft?

mb_72• 10 years ago

Yes, it happens, but that one ant then is apparently too selfish to go back again for the others.

truth_sentinell2• 10 years ago

Or too dumb to have the intelligence to know that he has to go back.

darrelld2• 10 years ago

I though ants left scent trails behind and that's how they make paths to food or exits

stronglikedan• 10 years ago

Does anyone know why they can't climb back out? The fourth picture shows them crawling on the walls and ceiling around the pipe. The third picture shows that the pipe isn't smooth inside, so they could conceivably climb it. Zooming in on the fourth picture doesn't seem to show a gap between the ceiling and the pipe, but that is the only reason I can think of as to why they couldn't climb back out.

Analemma_• 10 years ago

I would guess the problem is they don't even know they need to climb it to begin with. I don't think ants have enough consciousness to realize "this is the way I fell down, so this is where I have to go to get back", and the pipe wouldn't have any pheromone trails or anything to signal them. It's a long way to climb when you don't specifically realize that's what you need to do.

a3n• 10 years ago

My guess is that some do climb out, randomly, but not enough to be statistically significant.

Hell is not knowing that you're in hell and should get out.

dmix4• 10 years ago

Trappers/hunters who work in the wild wrap plastic around trees so otherwise adept tree climbing animals such as mice can't climb up the tree to eat their stored food (when bears aren't around in winter who could bypass the plastic). I'd imagine the machined metal used for the vents serve a similar purpose. Just not enough traction to climb that high up.

bsenftner• 10 years ago

I see an impactful animated film, like Watership Down, or VR experience where the reveal is you're one of these ants.

yason2• 10 years ago

Just wondering. Why can't they climb back up through the pipe? I've seen ants walking in the ceiling. And if there's a passageway to the outside (a researcher squeezed in) wouldn't the ant eventually find the way out?

maligree• 10 years ago

They don't really operate with the concept of "climbing back" or "way out".

yason2• 10 years ago

Ants do explore. If one finds more food somewhere that is outside or closer to outside, the rest will follow. It's not technically impossible for ants to climb up the ventilation pipe either, but I don't know if their instincts would desire to reconnect with the old colony should they stray back up there.

macintux2• 10 years ago

Can't believe I'm the first person in this comment stream to say it, but: doesn't this piece feel like a real-world Dwarf Fortress?

throwanem3• 10 years ago

Not enough !!lava!!.

ethbro4• 10 years ago

I feel like concrete-walled bunker is an even more difficult biome than glacier!

gmfawcett• 10 years ago

This was the comment I came here to read. :) Yes, that's exactly what it feels like.

intended• 10 years ago

Ugh. Real life + Dwaf fortress should pretty much never intersect.

Now I feel sympathy for the ants and hope they develop their own versions of retracting drawbridges and levers till they pierce the roof.

camiller2• 10 years ago

Interesting read, although I'm slightly disappointed that there were no giant mutant ants after the "nuclear weapons bunker" tease in the headline.

elihu• 10 years ago

It's interesting that given the collective problem solving skills of ants, that they are apparently unable to figure out not to fall into a hole.

I wonder if they just fall through by random chance, or if there was some ant at some point that left a "hey guys, there's food down here" pheromone trail, and all the ants that came after just reinforced it into an ant super-highway. If no one ever comes back to say "actually, there isn't any food down there, just an inescapable pit", then I guess ant logic says there must still be something good down there.

ethbro4• 10 years ago

If everyone who falls down into the hole is never heard from again, would they even be conscious of the hole?

My understanding of ants is limited, but as far as I know most of their communication is scent or contact-based, neither of which could provide communication past that first step. As far as they're concerned, it's effectively a black hole...

Terribledactyl• 10 years ago

There are a bunch of really intelligent looking behaviors from insects, but they seem to have a common theme of "storing" information in the environment. There is a hornet that will sweep and search its nest when it brings food back, but first it will place the food down. If you move the food while the search is going on, it will do the whole search over again when it goes out searching for food. The intelligent behavior seems to be tightly coupled with the environment. Maybe the hole is enough to break some assumptions with the ants.

ajmurmann3• 10 years ago

I wonder if we humans have similar obvious weaknesses or take similar shortcuts that we are completely unaware of.

Florin_Andrei• 10 years ago

They're only smart as a group. Individuals are pretty dumb. And the group doesn't care about "small losses". It's statistics-driven.

dmix4• 10 years ago

The memory of most ant species only lasts about 1 day. So for the group memory of the hole to persist there would have to be some sort of pattern of ants going to the hole and not going in, or some sort of warning sent near the hole. Otherwise there isn't an obvious way for this memory to persist in the colony.

Otherwise group memory can persist for years or decades to things such as the location of food sources. Which I learned in the wonderful book: "Ant Encounters: Interaction Networks and Colony Behavior"

https://www.amazon.com/Ant-Encounters-Interaction-Networks-B...

flycaliguy• 10 years ago

"Every year when the nest expands, thousands of worker ants fall down the pipe and cannot climb back out."

This sentence led me to believe that there is some sort of annual expansion event that disturbs the structure of the colony and sends a new load down.

javajosh• 10 years ago

If the ants have nothing to eat, and they don't have a queen to breed with, then what do the workers work at, exactly? Do they all just convert to scouts, spend their lives looking for food that doesn't exist, and die?

s0l1dsnak3123• 10 years ago

Based on the article it seems that they're just endlessly maintaining their nest. Waiting for their Queen who will never come...

sanqui• 10 years ago

This is probably the only article where I thought the photos would be better off as gifs.

j1vms• 10 years ago

Actually, two ants have escaped the pit by climbing out.

One was only but a child ant. The other, much later, had its back broken before being thrown into the pit. That ant eventually healed and it too amassed the willpower to climb out.

thecosas• 10 years ago

I think we're missing the clear Antman/Batman crossover opportunity.

Dowwie• 10 years ago

sounds like the beginning of a superhero comic book

gesman• 10 years ago

So i wonder if some kind human soul would just throw a solid rope, long enough to reach the bottom from the surface to help poor species?

Ants are like "WTF humans! F* your studies, help us already!"

lnanek2• 10 years ago

Wouldn't the ants just eat the rope? They don't have the intelligence to know not to eat it and that it is more valuable to leave intact for climbing back up later after falling.

ayyn0n0n0• 10 years ago

So what would happen if you ate one of these ants?

mseepgood• 10 years ago

You would die.

gjolund2• 10 years ago

Trickle down economics in the natural world.

dmix4• 10 years ago

Or conversely the lack of upward mobility is a suitable reflection of the socialist environs.

gjolund2• 10 years ago

Touche :)

gggggggg• 10 years ago

I see a Pixar movie in this somewhere as they free themselves. Though all the death is not ideal.

transfire• 10 years ago

Reminds me of Star Trek Voyager episode.

pvaldes2• 10 years ago

This is spartant

Do not really qualifies as colony, only as an accumulation of doomed individuals. I wonder if is even really disconnected from the other members. Ants can climb easily a rusty suface, can fit in any crevice and can dig.

Or maybe ... to take a look to the same big fat exit that humans used to enter in the bunker.

Ant colony discovered in an abandoned Polish nuclear weapons bunker

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