Researchers at Arizona State University tracked individual ants marked with colored dots as they selected a home out of a set of eight nest sites, half good and half poor. On their own, ants got overwhelmed and chose good sites only 50 percent of the time — no better than chance.
But when the whole colony was put to the test, each ant visited only one or two sites, limiting information overload. As the ants gather outside better nests, a consensus emerges and a home is found, the researchers report in the Oct. 9 Current Biology. [1]
Insects are known for having this mysterious “collective” mind, which makes them as a set more “intelligent” (whatever that word means) than each single one insect really is.
However why should we think that this is a trait only found in insects?
Joung has thought of the collective unconscious long ago.
Could we be sole ants looking alone for a place to make our nest, almost always ending up in bad decisions, while we could all together think as One?
Strange ideas… are what make science go forward.
