This is where a leafblower comes in handy.

I wonder what they're actually trying to do there. Pretty freaky anyway.

A rain dance?

Yo @ant you gotta see this.

http://theantroom.blogspot.com/2006/11/ant-death-spiral.html (not mine -- linked from YouTube video).

"This is one of my favorite things about ants -- the ant death spiral. Actually, it's a circular mill, 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."

Folks interested in things like self-organization, emergant properties, complex systems, etc. etc. like to point to this as a cautionary tale. I even found a reference to a group programming robots to interact like ants that accidentally produced this behavior in their robots. Apparently you can also reproduce this behavior in the lab by placing a glass jar into the surface. The ants will eventually circle the jar and continue to do so even after the jar has been removed. I assume just army ants. Wow, I wish we had an army ant colony in the lab."

>> ^ant:
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




You, sir, are full of awesome information about ants.

Thanks, but I am not really an ant expert. I just a fan of ants. That text was mentioned in the video comments' link. Anyways, back to my circular wanderings on the Internet and for food.

>> ^Tymbrwulf:


You, sir, are full of awesome information about ants.
<div><div style="margin: 10px; overflow: auto; width: 80%; float: left; position: relative;" class="convoPiece"> ant said:<img style="margin: 4px 10px 10px; float: left; width: 40px;" src="http://static1.videosift.com/avatars/a/ant-s.jpg" onerror="ph(this)"><div style="position: absolute; margin-left: 52px; padding-top: 1px; font-size: 10px;" class="commentarrow">◄</div><div style="padding: 8px; margin-left: 60px; margin-top: 2px; min-height: 30px;" class="nestedComment box">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
</div></div></div>

It's the Mecca pilgrimmage of the ants. http://thestar.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8341bf8f353ef0120a6b768d6970b-800wi

Shaky cam shakes.

The person off the camera shot sounded Japanese, and I don't know if Army ants are found in Japan. I thought they live in the Amazon and Australia?

Anyways, the camera was very shaky and wasn't focused well so we couldn't see it clearly.

Perhaps they were doing a ritual mating dance on the floor. They usually fly up and circle around the queen when in flight. Sometimes the queen fails to take off but the males continue to circle around her anyway. And I think this is one of those cases.

This is one of the craziest things I've ever seen! I was wondering why they would die from going in circles and apparently they keep going until they die of exhaustion.

Ant version of Improv Everywhere!

Does it say something about how soft i am that if i ever see this i'm going to gently divert them with a piece of paper so they don't all death march?

[redacted]

>> ^charliem:

This is where a leafblower comes in handy.


A leafblower that shoots air heated up to 700C or 1300F for you americans

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RAID!

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They are summoning a tiny Old One.

I thought that was the 9 day Chinese traffic jam.

OK. Watching that I really wanted to take a can of spray paint and paint a stripe outward from the center. Just to watch how the line of painted ants migrated through the group.

The paint would probably would just kill those ants though. Which is why my second attempt would involve a can of spray paint and a lighter. Not a fan of ants.

3 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

Discovery News and an expert: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prjhQcqiGQc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAAIbxF0uP0 from http://myrmecos.net/2011/02/09/ant-death-spiral/ -- "My simulation System sometimes emerges this kind of collective behavior."

*bugs

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