
Ants are less diligent than previously thought - prostoalex
http://idler.co.uk/article/news-ants-dont-actually-work-that-hard/
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matthewbauer
Anyone who has played Dwarf Fortress will know that it's usually unwise to get
to 0 idlers. In cases of sieges or megabeasts, you need some first responders
ready and not exhausted/occupied with other things. I wonder if this happens
with ants. The idlers eat less food and can just store the energy. When a
colony starts to run out, just send out half of those idlers in different
directions to scavenge.

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louhike
Yes, you will have to use this tactic for a lot of games (guards in Prison
Architect, soldiers in Age Of Empires who need to stay in the base, even when
you're attacking, etc.). The only problem for the ants is if they have to feed
those idlers.

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ivanca
I suspect that observing multiple generations of ants would give the answers
for those questions. My guess is that the 25% which are permanent idlers are
the older ants (retired) or injured ones (permanently disabled)

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restalis
But the traditional thinking so far was, AFAIK, that ants are working
diligently till they die, not till retire and get idle.

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ivanca
Imagine an human whose work is do lift rocks, one day he no longer can't lift
rocks, they always fall from his hands how could he do it until dead? Use the
rock to crush him? That would be suicide not actually "working until dead".
What I'm saying is that dead is a slow process for most beings, not a sudden
event, therefore "working till death" is a silly concept.

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chatwinra
Come on idler....it's a web article, so there's no excuse not to have a link
to the original paper itself!

We may only just know that ants are lazy, but we've known all along humans are
too lazy to do a google scholar search ;)

Seriously though - pet peeve = science stories with no direct links for
references.

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chatwinra
think this is it:

[http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00265-015-1958-1](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00265-015-1958-1)

it's hidden behind a paywall. Yay!

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Sven7
This is why I am not worried about AI. The smarter you are the less "diligent"
you need to be :)

