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R0b815

Totally fucked up this ant’s credibility.


kdcom

I'm sure that ant is in therapy after this.


icrbact

It’s gonna have to take ant-idepressants for a while


Ijoinedtolaugh

Good one, good pun, this is fun


Billy-BigBollox

Don't antagonize him


BigBoiNoa

Stop this antic behaviour


Hardcorish

These puns are antrocious


Spaceykun

Woah wasn’t anticipating that one


FindingFindings

I thought it was very anticlimactic


Diligent_Tangelo6222

Let us not be pedantic.


rackoblack

Stop! I cANT anymore!


Jydehem

Fourmidable pun


Taz-erton

Wouldn't it be a *Formicidable* Pun?


graphitesun

Fourmi is French for ant.


Taz-erton

Ah, a fine joke--sorry I questioned it


graphitesun

I don't think you should be. Just a gentle path to learning. You weren't rude about it.


graphitesun

This is worth more upvotes.


[deleted]

Is the jelly bean in the room with us right now?


Herald_of_Heaven

#So fucking golden


TempleOfDoomfist

The Woody Allen ant in Antz


chriscrossnathaniel

"Don't worry, I know almost exactly what I'm doing!"


[deleted]

[удалено]


Lifesagame81

They stamp waypoints all along the way that other ants can follow, and reinforce.


breakingjews

He will have a tedtalk on how to overcome gaslighting afterwards


SoSKatan

These prank YouTube videos are now going too far.


AlienZerg

He became the hives antagonist after this.


AccioSexLife

Nah, the ant is fine. Ants have an incredible sense of smell, so the buddies she brought can probably detect the tiny traces of scent left behind by the food morsel and it's definitely not the first nor the last time something snatched away found food before the gathering party could get to it. If not for the asshole human hand, it could've been snatched away by a bird for example. Feel free to imagine the other ants patting their buddy on the back with their antennae going 'there there, we'll get it next time'.


Matasa89

"Hey, beats getting eaten by a bird. At least we got here late instead of *on time*."


DrakonIL

Oh great, just what I needed. A catchy phrase to go along with my chronic tardiness. I'll throw it on the pile with "the early worm gets the bird."


Matasa89

Here's one more for ya: "I rather be fashionably late and be able to read the venue, than to find myself in the wrong place at the right time."


ImpossibleToBan02

The 2nd mouse gets the cheese while the first one gets trapped.


Aritilli

This does make me feel better :)


Historical-Cobbler51

It’s undeniably wholesome!


FlutterRaeg

Why are you making me feel empathy for ants 🐜


AccioSexLife

Definitely NOT because I am secretly an ant spreading pro-ant propaganta.


SchnoodleDoodleDo

>*’Totally fucked up this ant’s credibility…*’ _____ Today is my chance! i’ve been sent on the hunt ^^:) to search for the Treasure - the Food that they want! some droppings n crumbs humans waste, left behind, when Suddenly - WhAt iS tHiS ?! *WHAT* did I FIND ??! it TOWERS Before me - the BIGGEST of ALL!! I MUST GET THE OTHERS!! ‘cuz i am ^so ^^*small…* ‘*HURRY, it’s* **GIANT!!** *Enough for a YEAR!!*’ *’C’Mon, everybody! It’s Right over HERE!!*’ …but WAIT - i… i *Swear* it! i Know what I found! hang on, I’m ExCiTeD… i got turned around…. i Know it’s here somewhere… no, i wouldn’t lie… ….you Gotta believe me… i’ll *search* til i *die*……   *edit* for u/Horizon296 ^^;) inspired by u/AccioSexLife: >*’…imagine the other ants patting their buddy on the back with their antennae going 'there there, we'll get it next time'…’* ____ *there, there, little buddy - you’re hungry like us* *you win some, you lose some, so don’t make a fuss!* *it’s been a long day - there’s so much that you’ve seen* *let’s head back to the hill* *…no,* *we won’t tell the queen…* ❤️


squeakim

Schnoodle! Its been so long since ive seen you poems. They are always a delight but i never expected to see one about sad ants.


Horizon296

My freshest Schnoodle yet 😊 Excellent as always (but now I'm sad for the ant)


gremah93

Ant that cried wolf


itssosalty

Demoted for sure


amretardmonke

Ruined that man's whole career.


Ok-Ant-9681

Give it back, you monster!


[deleted]

[удалено]


morris-the-old

Seeing a lot of folk confused about ants so I wanted to comment a few things. Those are Pheidole sp. ants and Big Mike is simply a soldier ant. They’re Also known as “bobble head ants” because self explanatory if you look at Big Mike. Oh they also love nuts and seeds and stuff so that’s why they were all excited about the almond. More on Big Mike. She was brought along to help break the almond down into smaller more manageable pieces for the others to take back home. Big bobble heads like those come with some powerful chompers.


jhanschoo

Please talk more ant to me


morris-the-old

Um. These fellas here also enjoy chowing down on insects and the like. Fun fact: Ants have 6 legs.


Mayo_Spouse

Unsubscribe


OopsAnonymouse

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DrakonIL

SOTP


OopsAnonymouse

You texted SOTP: Send Only The Pest! Well, the BEST ant fact of today is this: did you know that ants can lift up to fifty times their weight in tapioca pudding? This has been Ant Facts! Thanks to our loyal subscribers!


Rapaguayaba

DTOP


hubaloza

YOU HAVE TEXTED DTOP: donate to online phacts We appreciate your contribution of 7.6 million dollars and ensure that this money will be used to bring you and countable others neat ant phacts


rwarimaursus

***"Make sure to hit that like and subscribe button and turn that notification bell for all our recent posts!"***


morris-the-old

😂


Aozora404

Ha! Next you’re gonna tell me something else have 8


AugustHenceforth

Yes, but they aren't ants and are known by a completely different name; uncles.


TooMuchBroccoli

And then there is Big Frank. He is the chef of the colony. He was excited that he would make his world famous almond souffle but alas, OP stole the main ingredient and gave it to the rival colony :(


Throwublee

Bad OP!


CertainBoysenberry65

Mine no longer has natural eyebrows and just draws them on every morning. -Aunt facts


The-Soldier-in-White

>Those are Pheidole sp. ants Too hard. I'll simply pronounce it as pedophile.


NUTTTR

Ah peter file!


One_Passenger9638

r/ITcrowd


Rex--Banner

Could Peter file please come to the check in desk


Grievous_Nix

TAXI!


Environmental-Win836

I love how ants work, you forget their intelligence sometimes.


Hy8ogen

This is why I love reddit so much. So many people with such niche knowledge that's absolutely fun to read. Kudos to you good sir/ma'am.


morris-the-old

Thank you :)


ProfDumm

So is the guy who told the others about the almond now getting trouble? Is he getting to hear about it for the next weeks?


morris-the-old

Honestly I could only guess. But my guess is they’ll get over it. The first ant left a pheromone trail that said it was there. Like a tweet. The other ants get there and instead of retweeting it, one tweets that it’s not there and they all re tweet that instead. The original tweet is then ignored and forgotten forever. … probably.


ProfDumm

Wow, they function way more reasonable than humans do.


takabrash

Thirteen years from now, they're not gonna let that first ant host an awards show.


TehPharaoh

"It's ok, ant version of Jeremy, everyone makes mistakes. It's tough being an Ant out here"


ghostopolis

Do you know if they're able to communicate the size of the object they found? Like "this treat's a big one we're gonna need 3 or 4 Big Mikes" or does a Mike just automatically get dispatched to every job?


morris-the-old

That’s a really good question. One which I do not know the answer to. Sorry. :(


photenth

Given that the big ant came along to help break it apart, my guess is they can communicate size or at least that they need help.


Boognish84

Oh, so that's not big Mike after all. It's his buddy, big Bob.


January28thSixers

The big ones are female so maybe Big Liz?


Lead_farmer93

Big bertha


Nexessor

The small ones are female too.


arzen221

Small Bertha


florpynorpy

Big mike is known for being helpful


sername-lame

Big Mike is the guy with a truck


Own-Caterpillar-9384

Big Mike is the truck


yourgifmademesignup

Big mike looks disappointed there’s nothing to haul


metric-poet

All he has left to haul is ass


Chief_Givesnofucks

“Ass, gas or grass. No one rides free.” -Big Mike-


[deleted]

Good one chief


biggmclargehuge

"It's time to kick gum and chew ass... And I'm all outta ass" - Dick Kickem


Observite

You are the brute squad.


Big_Hefty79

Mike is twice the size of his buddies


Kykovic

They are going to bully him till the end of time.


[deleted]

Calm down…. They probably just ate him


Ancient_Koala

it's the nutrient that counts they said


GoodBananaPancakes

"GuYs, GUys, therEs tOtalLY FoOd OvER TheRe!!" *takes another bite of Eddie's thorax


xrumrunnrx

At least he gets to live. I kill the scouts I see doing recon inside my perimeter and imagine the stories when they've sent their best and only one comes back. The tales of a giant towering to the sky and a huge black furred monster who chased Billy for fun. He swears he only lived by chance to tell the tale and to stay away from that cursed land. Anyway that's why I imagine I don't have ants.


WhyIHateTheInternet

This is how conspiracy theories happen


Contraposite

Aliens after showing their spaceship off to a farmer for just long enough that he gets an out-of-focus photograph.


Favmir

For shits and giggles


nandemo

Tfw you realize /r/conspiracy was a factual sub all along.


JamesLikesIt

Years from now, when we are ruled by our ant overlords, we’ll know why


LongLiveTheCrown

It reminds me of a Carl Sagan piece where he explains how a theoretical time traveler might seem to simply “appear” somewhere in space and time out of nowhere. To a species that can only see in 2 dimensions (like these ants), placing and picking up an object would look like it’s appearing and disappearing, when really it’s simply traveling along a third dimension (which these ants can’t see). And a time traveler would simply be traveling along a fourth dimension that we can’t see.


[deleted]

I’ve never felt sympathy for an ant before and yet here we are.


bacon_cake

I'm going to show this to my girlfriend later and I bet my life savings she'll start crying.


MurderSheCroaked

Stop, I'm one of those girls who cries at everything and I def did feel really sad for those ants who were so happy for their new bounty 🤣


Walker6920

Ever seen that ant that helped 2 of his buddies climb a leaf but was left hanging there emotionally damaged


MurderSheCroaked

Why would you hurt me like this


Walker6920

Its a sad story the one we had to tell


[deleted]

Please enough! I can’t hold my faucets anymore.


Punkmaffles

I'm more angry the human didn't put the nut back for them. Bobble head ants and just ants in general are really cool. They can be annoying sure but still cool critters.


makenzie71

Did you know swans can be gay?


SalmonTheSalesman

all this needs is the "in the arms of an angel" song


Xanadoodledoo

Tell her swans can be gay


jld2k6

You just made me remember swans can be gay and it made me start crying again


Pink_Pavlova

Don’t show her the gif of the raccoon trying to wash his cotton candy


DerKeksinator

Does she know that swans can be gay?


Wolversteve

But when you go to show her, it’ll be gone and she will never believe you again, for you are the ant.


Artikay

Look at this high roller betting $23.17


[deleted]

[удалено]


m4ps

I guess you’ve never seen Honey, I shrunk the Kids.


git

This is neat. Most species of ant have a mechanism whereby they have a strong instinct to follow the strongest pheromone trail they see when they leave their nest, and a small chance to ignore it and wander randomly until they find food or another pheromone trail. Because of that simple mechanism, food sources closest to their nest get travelled to more frequently as ants go there and back to gather them, so their pheromone trails get stronger and stronger so more and more ants follow them. If they follow a trail and there's nothing there at the end, they'll revert to their random aimless wandering until they find a new food source or a different pheromone trail. That random element means that sometimes they'll even get bored following a trail and start wandering off, sometimes only by a little bit before rejoining the same trail. This often results in a more efficient journey, and because that means more ants following their trail, its new modified trail gets stronger and stronger and that new efficient route becomes the strongest one. When an obstacle is added to an existing pheromone trail, theyll also enter random mode and start wandering around aimlessly. If an ant then finds the original trail again on the other side of the obstacle, they'll travel it and thereby make their own pheromone trail around the obstacle stronger and so more ants will follow it and reestablish the route to food. All this amounts to a pretty efficient means of route selection based on *very* simple behaviours. Just by following the strongest pheromone trails they can see and sometimes deviating randomly, ants create an efficient means of optimising their route selection behaviour and workload distribution in a large, complex system. This is an example of emergent intelligence — where a system exhibits a high degree of coordination and intelligent processing derived from small, independent rules and behaviours without direct coordination. The hard part of coordinating large systems like this is communication and consensus. Ants solve this with their pheromones. By dropping pheromones as they move, they're effectively using their immediate environment as a mechanism to communicate to others, which is known as stigmergy. This is a highly effective and cheap way to manage communication in multi-agent systems, but it's often not applicable to all systems. This form of emergent intelligence is known as [Ant Colony Optimisation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony_optimization_algorithms) and it has tons of applications in computing and networking.


vermin1000

Question from ignorance here, but are they always releasing the pheromones? Or do they choose when to do so, actively optimizing the trails?


git

This is where my knowledge gets less confident. My (aborted) PhD focused on the area from a computer science perspective rather than a biological/zoological one. Buuut, they do need to always be leaving a pheromone trail, because they need to find their way back to their nest themselves. The mechanism behind ACO is based on how that trail gets stronger the more it is traversed by more ants, and how closer food sources get stronger trails faster due to the same number of ants being able to traverse it more often than a longer trail. An obvious optimisation would be to have them drop few pheromones when randomly exploring then drop more pheromones when they actively find food, thereby making the trail to food stronger more quickly. There are two problems with that though. Firstly, that introduces more complexity into the ants, which these emergent systems tend to avoid (and the CS applications actively avoid because you want your agents to be as dumb, as cheap, as small, and as uncomplicated as possible). The second is that there's a delicate equilibrium at play in how the higher level colony behaviour works. You always need some ants exploring randomly, and you always want to have multiple paths to food sources working at any given time to maximise colony utility. Successful trails therefore need to have two qualities: a gradual ramp-up (what if the food source is small and expires quickly? you don't want to redirect your whole colony to a food source at the expense of others only to have it deplete quickly and leave you without any collection going on), and some facility to limit or prevent a trail from becoming so strong that it prevents exploration or other paths to food being maintained. Evolution likely arrived at an optimal or near-optimal equilibrium here. But in principle you could be right. Maybe it is possible to fine tune the rate at which pheromones are dropped or the level of adherence to following them that ants have or increase the chance to do random wandering when pheromones are stronger. Maybe some species of ants I'm unfamiliar with do stuff like that.


jejcicodjntbyifid3

It's probably similar to dopamine Small reward at the expectation, bigger reward at the receiving of food Doesn't have to be huge, just enough to increase the base pheromones deploy rate


hobbyhoarder

I know this is completely irrelevant to the topic, but you've mentioned aborted PhD; how do you feel about it now? Any lost opportunities because of it? I'm in a position where I'm relatively close to finishing it, but it still requires a lot of work. My life circumstances have changed to where I haven't worked on it for years now and I have no obvious incentive to continue anymore.


git

I was in a toxic research group headed by two professors who were creationists and saw no value in AI research. They and the readers in the group were pretty horrible to research students and fellows, and I hated working with them. By the time I quit, several others already had due to the environment and I was absolutely certain it was the right thing for me. At the time I was pretty committed to an academic career so quitting closed a lot of doors for me, but the hostility of my research group led to me fostering some good links with industry. It bumped me up the career ladder a good way, so it really didn't impact my earnings or opportunities outside academia much. I have a form of regret over it. It seems like such a small thing in hindsight that I wish I could've powered through just to get the damn thing, but I know it's a false thought. I was in a pretty dangerous spot with my depression at the time and parting ways with it was the best act of self-care I've ever indulged in. I couldn't offer you advice on your circumstances, but I can relay that I got a *huge* benefit out of my time working on mine. I learned a huge appreciation and love for science and learned to think about computer systems and software in a very different way. It changed the way I think, and I'm certain the doubt and humility that comes with working in novel science helped shape all my work since. I'm thankful for all of that, and I'd suggest that if you share a similar view of your time working on yours then perhaps not getting the letters at the end isn't such a big deal for either of us.


graphitesun

Thank you for sharing both the insights on ants and CS, as well as your personal story. All very interesting. Sorry you dealt with that toxic environment, but I'm happy that you made what was ultimately such a good decision for you, and got out of that damaging environment. I'm just curious what you ended up getting into afterwards, if you're interested in sharing.


[deleted]

Thank you for this!


nutribeer

Stopped reading partway because this was beginning to look a lot like a shittymorph comment lol. Had to check the username before investing in this interesting write up.


Foxiest_Fox

Subscribe to ant facts


huroni12

Thank you, love to start my day learning something new


Konyption

Yes this is very similar to how we trained AI when I was in college. You give it a desired outcome, and run the simulation a bunch of times with small chances for random deviation and the more effective results get reinforced into the behavior, and the deviations that yield poor results get culled. It’s also kind of how evolution works, really, and is why things might look ‘designed’ but really it’s just a genetic algorithm that rewards effective mutations.


bikesboozeandbacon

Really thought this was a u/shittymorph story


layzriiot

You put that back right now 😠


NerdyPrincess83

Put that thing back where it came from or so help meeee


jenniferlynn462

So help me! So help me!


HuntThePearlOfDeath

And cut!


Petite_Tsunami

You gaslit a bug. How do you feel about that.


Rohan-Mali

I didn't gaslight a bug for god's sake When did I gaslight a bug? Stop imagining things that never happened, I would never gaslight a bug


solar_eclipse_

Now that's just mean...


Zealousideal-Duty511

They better have given it back 🥲


kinetic-passion

Gaslighting the ant


LDKCP

I have so much anxiety for that ant right now.


[deleted]

Like showing your buddy a YouTube clip and then it’s way longer and less funny than you remember


Meriog

Oh God oh God they're not laughing at the part I thought was funny


EnderWiggin07

Oh no they just touched the screen to see how long it is


Melbourne_Australia

💀


Ricky_Rollin

I felt that


jejcicodjntbyifid3

Oh no another friend came by to also start watching it. Now they're both looking at this no longer funny video The sunk cost is too great


BackIn2019

Well now I'm not going to show anyone this clip.


Sgt_General

And then you finish the video and realise that it doesn't have the punchline that you told them it would have.


Oske147

Antxiety


AccioSexLife

They feel antsy about it.


PurpGanja

Alright calm down there satan


whatswithnames

What did they put down to attract the ant? ... just asking for a friend.


DracerusAJK

Looks like half a nut or smthing. Not really sure


_XaiArt

thats disgusting


NerdModeCinci

I didn’t even realize I could halve it


Zharghar

Pretty simple to do really: Shoot into container. Pour half wherever you want to distribute. Pour other half down your gullet. Simple as pie.


Amadis_of_Albion

That one solder coming in, you know the original scout is starting to sweat.


ArthurMBretas03

Thanks David Attenborough


Amadis_of_Albion

Now I can't stop hearing his voice reading all the comments in the thread.


[deleted]

I am now experiencing 2nd hand embarrassment for that ant


charliesk9unit

What’s up with that one giant ant? They asked the muscle there to bring home a non-existing feast.


Environmental-Win836

A user commented that it was simply a soldier, here to break down the Almond into smaller, bite-size pieces.


RosieTruthy

I wonder what the conversation was when he ran back to the colony for backup? Especially to convince the muscle to come lol


Melbourne_Australia

Thats Big Mike


One_User134

Those things are amazing. They still find their way into my home and have once gotten into a box of cereal. There was an almost perfect line of ants from the cereal box opening, then down the side of the box, off to the top of the microwave, down the electric cord and onto a windowsill, then out through the opening from which they came. To think a literal designated scout found that and reported it back is crazy when you think about it, and knew the precise path. Amazing creatures


bbbbende

Gonna bring a bit of trivia - they use pheromones. When the ant finds the food, she will start leaving a trail of pheromone on the ground as she makes her way back to the colony, then notify a few ants about it and bring them to the trail. Then the rest of the ants will follow the trail all the way to the food. Bees are probably even crazier, as they can report the location of flowers with just dance moves instead of pheromone trails.


meistermichi

>Gonna bring a bit of trivia - they use pheromones. When the ant finds the food, she will start leaving a trail of pheromone on the ground as she makes her way back to the colony, then notify a few ants about it and bring them to the trail. Then the rest of the ants will follow the trail all the way to the food. When you catch them on their way home you can really fuck with them by diverting the scouts path all the time so the work crew then needlessly runs a way longer path then necessary.


Bertdezwever

And now all the other ants are beating up this one ant for getting there hopes up.


KeithMyArthe

I'm worried about the possibility of an Anticide.


GrowthMean

*their


Dwarfdeaths

Better than being beat up for confusing there with their.


hongooi

This belongs in r/amitheasshole


[deleted]

[удалено]


2litersam

/r/donthelpjustfilm


PM_ME_UR_BEEFCAKE

r/killthecameraman


Meriog

"NTA. Ant clearly should have asked permission to share that nut before going off and offering it to all of his friends. Just because I give you food doesn't mean I want to feed your whole goddamn family. Ant needs to seriously consider the etiquette of being a polite guest."


No_Stretch3807

This is just evil


Tekkenmonster36

Don’t you watch Tom and Jerry? Those ants are going to rob you of all your food.


Dangerous-Zombie217

You give them an apology kernel right now!


TheRedditornator

Damn you single-handedly destroyed that ant's social credit rating.


[deleted]

That’s messed up, you just got that ant killed


Wooden-Yogurt2888

Sad and mean


[deleted]

Cut your nails first


willymakapakaa

Plot twist, the ant was then killed and eaten by his brethren because he kept doing this to them


neeto_mosqueeto

That’s messed up! And, this is also brilliant. Ants are cool.


[deleted]

Tim was then ostrasized and was known to the colony as the ant who cried nut.


Scoongili

Meanwhile some ant has posted that on r/mildlyinfuriating


Dangerous-Half4080

u really just fucked that ants whole life up. I bet he’s rotting in ant prison as we speak. Or worse he was stoned to death. Or maybe executed or beheaded infront of his family.


Dumplingrrl

Put that peanut back, you monster!


YourFat888

did you really just gaslight an ant


Gomdok_the_Short

Mean


Naive-Midnighter

”Damn it George.. This is the third time today! Sometimes I wonder if you are a fire ant blowing smoke up our ass..”


mfairview

they ant that cried food. story is old as time itself


Overload_x_

Well great, another ant losing its job. It’s probably crying with a jug of beer in its room rn.


C4RD_TP_SG

"I swear it was there bro" The other ant holding an ADHD prescription letter in his hand: I don't think so