2/ "... phenomenon in which a group of army ants, which are blind, are separated from the main foraging party, lose the pheromone track and begin to follow one another, forming a continuously rotating circle. The ants will eventually die of exhaustion." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_mill
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3/ I'm not a myrmecologist so don't take my explanation too literally. (Follow
@Myrmecos if you want one.) But from a computational perspective, essentially,Show this thread -
4/ The ants coordinate via message passing (pheromones) through the environment (stigmergy) with a chemical TTL (decay). But, their path dependent history conspires to create a feedback loop that dooms them all. Anywho I study belief systems and social media. Totally unrelated.
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What is the build up in the middle? Do they head to the middle once they reach peak exhaustion?
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Hrm. I don't know. My *guess* would be that they they just get bunched up there but can't escape because if they rejoin the rotating fray they'll stay within the spiral. So an inward pressure constrained by the core space.
@Myrmecos am I wrong?
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CIRCLE PIT!!! XD
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Wish I could get the ants plaguing my kitchen to do that.
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