Human chain flood rescue - GIF

[mklotz]

Mother Nature!

Evolution. Survival of the fittest. But one must wonder just how many generations it takes for such behavior to develop. I would guess it is well beyond tens of thousands, perhaps millions or more. First, one ant learned to draw a morsel of food back to the nest. Then, two grabbed the same morsel and fought over it. Then they learned not to fight, but cooperate. Etc.

The "learning" is not just getting a bright idea. It is a random process of changes in the genes, some better and others worse. And the ones with the better changes tend to have more offspring who survive. It is a slow process.

According to this article...

https://expeditions.fieldmuseum.org/...nd-environment

"Ants first appeared on the earth between 140 to 168 million years ago, during the Jurassic period"

Most insects produce eggs continuously so defining the number of generations they've experienced to date is difficult. However, at even a seemingly low rate of, say, ten generations per year, that's a billion or so generations - plenty of time to fine tune some incredible behaviors.

Also, ants communicate with each other. Who's to say there aren't "captain" ants that direct worker ants to perform certain cooperative actions?

[TrickieDickie]

I find this fascinating the coordination of these ants to move the huge worm.
Many years ago while attending USM in Hattiesburg, MS, I went fishing at a local public pond and encountered a small bush loaded with caterpillars, all on different branches and leaves, all swinging in unison in the same direction. No cell phone in those days (not even thought of yet) to document the event. Not sure what they were up to but they got my attention.

[Inner]

For what it's worth these are Leptogenys Ants from Cambodia. They literally use their jaws to hook onto the ant ahead of them, much like multiple locomotives pulling a train. In the locomotives, the controls are usually wired together because otherwise communication hampers performance. Perfect communication => perfect performance. I'm pretty sure mklotz is correct with something like a "captain ant".

[mwmkravchenko]

Mother Nature!

Evolution. Survival of the fittest. But one must wonder just how many generations it takes for such behavior to develop. I would guess it is well beyond tens of thousands, perhaps millions or more. First, one ant learned to draw a morsel of food back to the nest. Then, two grabbed the same morsel and fought over it. Then they learned not to fight, but cooperate. Etc.

The "learning" is not just getting a bright idea. It is a random process of changes in the genes, some better and others worse. And the ones with the better changes tend to have more offspring who survive. It is a slow process.

I find that a little difficult to swallow. With design and thinking there has to be reason a process. Random begets little in terms of design and process. Shrouding the ideas of random chance in eons of time and chance don't make up for the incredible complexity of what is happening in that video.

[Duke_of_URL]

It seems that we learn more from nature than nature learns from us.

- If learning in life is embedded in DNA (unproven) then somehow mankind, as the earth's "supreme" being, got shortchanged from ant-hood to man-hood, because some human had to "invent" the chain and the division of force using multiple chains predates Isaac Newton by millions of years.
- How do spiders know to employ the best geometric shapes in their unique webs? Who teaches them to build their complex webs? Did ancient man observe the fly in the spider's web and use that concept to invent the fishing net?
- Darwinian evolution looks at macroscopic differences and speculates on which begat what, an action that is hardly worthy of the term, "science."
- I bring up "programming" because it is hardly ever addressed in honest debates about evolution. And how is the programming passed down?
- Another question for the Darwinist to answer: Why do almost all living species exhibit physical symmetry? What forces that? Gravity? Cosmic Rays? Why doesn't man have a claw one side and a hand on the other, etc.?

[mklotz]

"Extinctions have been a natural part of the planet’s evolutionary history. 99% of the four billion species that have evolved on Earth are now gone."

https://ourworldindata.org/extinctio...e-gone-extinct

That's a helluva lot of design excursions that have been rejected to arrive at the current designs.

[WmRMeyers]

"Extinctions have been a natural part of the planet’s evolutionary history. 99% of the four billion species that have evolved on Earth are now gone."

https://ourworldindata.org/extinctio...e-gone-extinct

That's a helluva lot of design excursions that have been rejected to arrive at the current designs.

Off hand, I'd say the odds are real good we're going to be on that reject list too.

Bill

[mklotz]

Off hand, I'd say the odds are real good we're going to be on that reject list too.

Bill

I certainly hope so. It would be very depressing to think that present day humans represent the epitome of a random improvement algorithm.

[Frank S]

I certainly hope so. It would be very depressing to think that present day humans represent the epitome of a random improvement algorithm.

I want 4 arms with 2 thumbs on each hand the 2nd one where the pinky finger is now, the ability to rotate my wrist the same and an owl can rotate his head, and the ability to make a reverse fist, a 3rd eye with full spectral vision, plus the ability to utilize the other 70 to 90 % of my brain. When the evolutionary process reaches that level I'm coming back, I don't care who I have to tick off to do so

[Toolmaker51]

Those ants really work well together as a collective don't they.

Turn the speakers way up. I found out all but one of them... he's riding on the worm, yelling "Mush".