
'Hey I'm Dead' The Story Of The Very Lively Ant - chaostheory
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102601823
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dfranke
I want an ant farm that comes with bottles of ant pheremones. Then I'd use
them to build a Rube Goldberg machine out of ants and make them calculate pi
or something.

Edit: somebody should totally apply to YC with this idea. You could even get
free publicity by getting PETA on your case.

Edit 2: Name the company "Insect Overlords".

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iamwil
I don't know that you can calculate pi directly. However, an easier problem to
map to with ants is the Traveling Salesman. Then you can map it to all the
other NP-complete problems.

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iamwil
I've listened to the podcast and it was a treat. Ed was also able to isolate
the chemical that ants lead behind when they're tracing back home from a food
source. When he dabbed it at the entrance of an ant colony, they exploded out
of the burrow.

For fun, he likes to write his name with the chemical, and the ants will
follow it, tracing out his name.

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patio11
_When he dabbed it at the entrance of an ant colony, they exploded out of the
burrow._

Somebody tell exterminators that trick!

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jballanc
This was covered a while back as part of a RadioLab
(<http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/>) episode. Not sure if this is exactly
the same audio or not (didn't have time to listen), but if you haven't already
listened to every single RaidoLab show, do so...now...

What? What are you still doing reading this?!? Go listen already...they're
mind blowing!

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req2
I wonder what would happen if an entire colony suddenly "turned dead".

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josefresco
You don't want to know maan. Chaos.

In all seriousness I would imagine every ant carrying each other to the 'dead'
pile over and over and over until the smell wore off all the ants and life
returned to normal.

Could we combine the 'follow' scent with this and create some sort of
elaborate Rube Goldberg ant machine?

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dfranke
Did we both think of this idea simultaneously?
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=544035>).

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Ardit20
I wonder if the ants can talk and have sophisticated societies with large
building underground, by they standards anyway and perhaps have universities
and stuff, I mean perhaps they like us just different.

