
A giant crawling brain: the world of termites - kawera
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/18/a-giant-crawling-brain-the-jaw-dropping-world-of-termites
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yesenadam
(Yeah, it's ants, anyway) I recently watched the 1974 movie _Phase IV_ ,
about...

 _Due to an unknown cosmic event...ants have undergone rapid evolution and
developed a hive mind. A scientific team begins investigating strange towers
and geometrically perfect designs that ants have built in the desert. Except
for one family, the local human population flees the strangely acting ants.
[Two scientists] set up a computerized lab in a sealed dome located in an area
of significant ant activity in Arizona. The ant colony and the scientific
team... fight each other, though the ants are the more effective aggressors._
(wikipedia)

It's actually intelligent and rather good, if low-budget. Lots of close-up
footage of ants.

Unfortunately the producer removed the final 6 minutes of the movie, which
seems crazy, as it's the best part, hallucinatory, a dreamlike vision of the
future. It was thought lost but recently found again:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beLpsWaUDNk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beLpsWaUDNk)

That ending is a must see - but not until after you see the movie. (The
version of the movie I saw was the truncated official release one.) I don't
want to give spoilers, but the lost ending contains themes very similar to
some things in the article.

Also seeing the massive 1974 computer they had in their lab and its pen
printouts was interesting. One of the scientists is a number theory expert,
recruited to learn the ants' language and try to communicate with them, and
the movie shows a lot of him doing that.

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cuboidGoat
Sounds fun, Frank Herbert's "The Green Brain" is on very similar themes. Is
also an excellent book. I suspect it would be much better known, if it wasn't
so overshadowed by his Dune series.

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kitd
Hofstaedter touches on it in "Godel Escher Bach" too.

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yesenadam
Aunt Hilary xD

