[MD] Social Ants?

[Case]

[Steve]
I agree that it is not a matter of sophistication or complexity. It is a
categorical difference between biological and social behavior that we are
interested in distinguishing.

[Case}
I believe if you examine social behaviors from a functional stand point
you will find no categorical differences among them. They are evolutionary
patterns that serve to perpetuate the species.

Arlo:
>I'd
> say that whenever biological individuals work
> together to achieve something
> greater than what each could achieve alone, you are
> witnessing social pattern
> of value. That "ant colony" is a "higher form of
> evolution" than "individual,
> biological ants" in the same way that "a city" is a
> higher form of evolution
> than "individual, biological humans".

Steve:
I think you are making a big leap in yor analogy. I
tend to think that a more appropriate analogy may be
cell : body as ant : colony.

[Case]
Some biologists have proposed treating colonies of ants and hives of bees
as the individuals of the species.

[Steve]
I'd also rather look at specific ant behavior patterns
to make up my mind than considering a colony as a
possible biological pattern. If ant colony is
analogous to society then colony is too broad a term.
It would include biological and social patterns in
that case.

What ant behavior patterns do you consider social?

[Case]
Ants apparently communicate though chemicals (pheromones), bees have a
dance that seems to convey relatively complex information about the
location of nectar sources. At some point it was proposed here that
corporations, governments and churches might be treated as species of
social organisms. This few does have the disadvantage of putting
individual humans in the service of social organisms rather than the other
way around, though.

Arlo:
> However, I would place "instinctual social behavior"
> on the very primative and crude end of the social level.
>And "learned behavior" on the more sophisticated end.

Steve:
I recall a pattern called imprinting where, say, a
chicken will attach itself to a "mother" and that this
pattern can be fooled into working to attach a baby
chicken to another animal.

This sounds like the sort of pattern that you would
consider both social and instinctual.

[Case]
Rather than saying the chick is “fooled” this strikes me as an example of
a trait evolving because of the high probability that the first thing a
new chick sees will be its mother. This is very adaptive, however, the
lack of flexibility also suggests why a more flexible organism would be
less likely to be “fooled” and thus pass along it's flexibility.
Behavioral flexibility is another evolutionary strategy. Nature is nothing
if not opportunistic.

As for the social/instinctual distinction, this looks to me like a genetic
patterns that is shaped by interaction with the environment. Same deal as
happens with human infants below.


Steve:
I think unconscious copying is key to understanding
how social patterns develop in humans. I think so more
and more as I watch my baby daughter hold my cell
phone up to her ear and mimic sounds on the verge of
speach.

I've also thought about emotional sense as a
biological awareness that is needed to develop social
patterns. I think emotions are biological patterns
that are the gateway to social patterns as words are
social patterns that are the gateway to intellectual
patterns.

That of course would not be a ssignificant a
distinction for you since you draw the line at a
different place.

[Case]
Studies of infants babbling indicate that all infants not only do it but
sound the same early on in terms of rhythm and intonation. As they grow
older their babble tends more and more to resemble the speech patterns of
the adults around them. This happens well before they being using words.
Intellectual patterns develop well before speech. Infants seem to be
biologically tuned both to respond in certain ways and to illicit certain
response patterns from their mothers. Barry Braselton calls this a kind of
“dance”. Piaget showed a whole sequence of stages of intellectual
development in humans. This is where biology meets psychology.

> [Steve]
> Personally I don't think that ants display learned
> behavior or copy the behavior
> of other ants. The roles that different ants play
> seem biological rather than
> social to my understanding of the levels. There are
> no ant celebrities, for
> example. The queen has a special role but the other
> ants don't subconsciously
> try to be like her.
>
> [Arlo]
> Again, I'd only comment that the social patterns
> emerging from ants certainly
> don't display the level of sophistication we find
> among humans. But this is
> like comparing a "cell" to a "human body" and saying
> that because the cell
> doesn't have a "nervous system" it must'nt be
> biological.

[Case]
This lack of ant “celebrity” simply shows that it is of no significance to
their survival. Even human “celebrity” seems little more that frou- frou
on the head boat of the human pecking order.

Steve:
I really think what Pirsig means when he talks about a
social level distinct from the biological level is
more like culture (which later also includes
intellectual patterns once they evolve). It is
independent of the individual biological entities. If
you hatch a bunch of ants that never had anything to
do with other ants they would form the same sort of
colony as any other ants in that species. This sort of
biological determination doesn't sound to me like a
categorically different level of evolution.

[Case]
Wilson argues that if you look at human cultures geographically isolated
from one another across the planet and across time, the similarities are
so striking as to argue for a biological basis. He maintains there is more
variation in insect social organization patterns than among human
societies. He even argues that religion is biologically based.

When considering the range of social behaviors manifested across species,
rather that discontinuity, I see mere elaboration on a viable evolutionary
strategy.

[Steve]
However, it we secretely switched all the baby monkies in the
womb between teh two monkey islands I described, they
would participate in different social patterns than
their parents, so their social patterns would not be
biologically determined.

[Case]
I can find no reference to social patterns of tool use among isolated
monkey colonys on the web. In fact the only reference to tool use among
monkeys I see has to do with capuchin monkeys in South America -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4083517.stm

Are you sure you are not mixing this up with the urban legend of the 100th
Monkey?

Earlier you mention apes teaching language to other apes. This is dubious
at best. The only reference I can find relates to Washoe and Loulis. All
of the other references involve young apes learning from observations of
humans interacting with older chimps. This site has a synopsis
http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/psych26/language.htm but this is whole
area of study was mired in politics and ideology from the get go. A sad
case of opportunity fiddled away.



[Steve]
I recognize that you would draw the line differently,
but can we agree that that is what Pirsig means? --a
"culture" to what ever level of sophistication that
gets passed on from biological entity to biological
entity by some means other than DNA?

[Case]
Can’t speak for Arlo but while I agree that this is what Pirsig means I do
not agree that there is such a thing. I think that human social sciences
are an exciting area of study but if you divorce them from biology I don’t
think you are left with much.