JLT
Posts: 740
Joined: Jan. 2008
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DO'L about altruism:
| Quote | | More generally, psychologists who are searching for an animal model are doubtless looking in the wrong direction. They should, in my view, begin by rcognizing that this type of behaviour is characteristically human and probably requires a human level of consciousness. |
Current Biology (unfortunately not open access)
| Quote | Andrew F.G. Bourke. Social Evolution: Daily Self-Sacrifice by Worker Ants. Available online 8 December 2008. [doi:10.1016]
Summary
Each evening, a few workers of a Brazilian ant doom themselves to die overnight by remaining outside the nest to seal its entrance. This striking behaviour is a novel form of worker self-sacrifice.
Main Text
According to the precepts of Stalinist society exposed so vividly by Arthur Koestler in Darkness at Noon, the definition of an individual was “a multitude of one million divided by one million”. The implication is clear that, in such a society, selfhood has dissolved in a mass of interchangeable units, each existing only to serve the collective. This social model, nightmarish to the liberal human mind, is close to the reality in some insect colonies. In many species, workers have adaptations the use of which destroys or at least handicaps their bearer, while benefiting the colony. The canonical example is the sting of the honey bee worker, deployment of which kills the stinging bee [1]. In other cases, workers of some ants become distended and immobilized within the nest through use as living food stores [2], and larvae of other species provide queens with blood meals via special organs from which queens sip their haemolymph [3].
An international team of researchers, led by Adam Tofilski of the Agricultural University of Krakow and Francis Ratnieks of the University of Sussex, has now added to the catalogue of adaptations for worker self-sacrifice by describing a novel behaviour in the Brazilian ant Forelius pusillus [4]. When external activity ends at the close of each day, a small group of workers seals the nest entrance from the outside with sand or soil. Because at night-time the external environment proves fatal to them, these workers effectively condemn themselves to death. This behaviour differs from previously-described forms of defensive self-sacrifice, like the stinging behaviour of honey bee workers, because it is not facultative: it does not arise in direct response to danger, but occurs routinely as a defence in anticipation of a possible threat. In the words of the researchers, it is pre-emptive self-sacrifice [4]. [...] |
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"Random mutations, if they are truly random, will affect, and potentially damage, any aspect of the organism, [...]
Thus, a realistic [computer] simulation [of evolution] would allow the program, OS, and hardware to be affected in a random fashion." GilDodgen, Frilly shirt owner
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