from Hacker News

Cockroaches live in a democracy (2006)

by AxisOfEval on 7/2/14, 10:15 PM with 10 comments

• by clay_to_n on 7/3/14, 2:08 AM

  Ants behave similarly. If Steven Johnson's book Emergence, he writes that ant colonies have three "landmarks" - the queen, the dead ants, and a "trash pile" - husks and leftovers from food and foraging. The queen is placed first, and as ants die they will place the dead ant pile - but they will place it to be at the max distance (while still in the colony) from the queen. The trash pile is then placed at the location that maximizes the distance from the other two.

  He claims the the queen is not responsible for this behavior - she's not a "dictator" nor much smarter than other ants. They are able to do it because, individually, they will move things to a better place if they know one exists.

  They also manage to distribute their efforts very well, because each ant keeps track ly of what other ants are doing (based on pheromones and running into other ants). If an ant senses that there aren't enough ants looking for new food (based on his limited interactions), he will go look for new food.

  Really cool stuff, though I agree the title isn't great. This isn't really about democracy, but individually simple behaviors that are optimal for the group.

• by m52go on 7/3/14, 12:13 AM

  I bet the cockroach brains are much less varied than ours, i.e., the variance of intelligence in a random sample population of cockroaches is much smaller than it would be in a random sample of human beings.

  With that added variance, the implications of 'everyone having an equal say' are profound.

• by Mz on 7/3/14, 12:33 AM

  Excerpt:

  For example, if 50 insects were placed in a dish with three shelters, each with a capacity for 40 bugs, 25 roaches huddled together in the first shelter, 25 gathered in the second shelter, and the third was left vacant.

  When the researchers altered this set-up so that it had three shelters with a capacity for more than 50 insects, all the cockroaches moved into the first "house".

  Yeah, this does not really sound anything like democracy. I can't figure out what to call it but deciding "yuppers, there is enough room in one shelter for the colony" or "whoops, we need to divide up because it won't take us all" is not any kind of evidence of "voting."

• by jessaustin on 7/2/14, 11:42 PM

  Holy anthropomorphism Batman!

  There are numerous mechanisms to explain how tiny-brained insects could determine suitable shelter that are all much more plausible than "democracy".