14 September 2010

A "circular mill" of ants


Now popularly referred to as a "death spiral."
"...first described in army ants by Schneirla (1944). A circle of army ants, each one following the ant in front, becomes locked into a circular mill. They will continue to circle each other until they all die. How crazy is that? Sometimes they escape, though. Beebe (1921) described a circular mill he witnessed in Guyana. It measured 1200 feet in circumference and had a 2.5 hour circuit time per ant. The mill persisted for two days, "with ever increasing numbers of dead bodies littering the route as exhaustion took its toll, but eventually a few workers straggled from the trail thus breaking the cycle, and the raid marched off into the forest."
Text from The Ant Room.  Video via Neatorama.

2 comments:

  1. The ants go marching two by two...

    ReplyDelete
  2. It would be too easy to make sociological comparisons!

    ReplyDelete

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