Teamwork

I'm Hofstadter's huge fan, therefore I use to look at ants as sub-symbolic living metaphors, without any real will except that of the colony. From the collective behaviour, smoothed by evolution, emerges a sharp intelligence.

Still, looking at such a stunning demonstration of cooperation, I have hard time considering them like empty shells that simply react to external stimulus. That's a fascinating change of level: do ants know about the strategies they're carrying on? and the colony, is it aware?

Emergent ants... the wet way

Ants never cease to amaze. A group of scientists of the Georgia Institute of Technology studied how groups of ants "link" themselves together forming a self-assembled organic structure that... does not sink!  "Even when enough force is applied to submerge it, the raft quickly pops back up undamaged" writes the New Scientist. Appearently, they grip with mandibles, claws and some "adhesive stuff" present on legs. How can this lifeboat "float" is still unknown anyway.

Ant colony is far more important than the single one, so they evolved many ways to bind together and preserve the whole swarm, by forming ladders, walls and, in this case, even a raft. Of course, sub-swarm units are important too: scientists discovered that they can "trap" a small amount of air, in order to keep breathing when submerged. Amazing.

Fractal food

Another fractals-related post: I found this very nice website which shows how fractals and caothic math surround us in Nature. What you see in the photo is a simple broccoli; in Italy we refer to it as "cavolfiore": a well known vegetable that hides interesting secrets.

By zooming the surface you'll discover that it shows a complete autosimilarity just like any other fractal: you'll always find smaller, identical broccoli in every scale.

The recurrence stops at atomic level, but it's stunning anyway.