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Gliding ants — the only wingless insects known to actively direct their fall — were first observed last year outside Iquitos, Peru, by insect ecologist Stephen P. Yanoviak of UTMB. While perched 100 feet up in the rainforest canopy waiting for mosquitoes to alight and feed on his blood, Yanoviak casually brushed off a few dozen ants that were attacking him and noticed their uncanny ability to land on the tree’s trunk and climb back to the very spot from which they’d fallen.
Ants are the favorite example of people who emphasize emergent behavior over individual leadership. Having actually read The Ants and spent a very interesting afternoon with E.O. Wilson, I’ve long been convinced that the miraculous behavior of ant colonies is made up of many small acts of individual volition (in the ant sense of that word) and not simply an unconscious emergent phenomenon.
These ants are doing something distinctly individual, gliding purposefully, just as individual ants do a number of things with signaling pheromones to establish—almost negotiate—the paths and limits their colonies use. This isn’t to say ants are intelligent on the same level as a person, but that it is over-simplifying to argue their behavior characterizes a better process of collective action.]]>