{"id":2662,"date":"2015-11-04T12:46:07","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T18:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=2662"},"modified":"2015-11-04T12:46:07","modified_gmt":"2015-11-04T18:46:07","slug":"burglar-ants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/11\/04\/burglar-ants\/","title":{"rendered":"Burglar Ants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>NewScientist<\/em><\/strong> (17 October 2015, paywall) comes up with a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/dn28304-zoologger-the-robber-ants-living-in-a-gang-of-their-own\/\" target=\"_blank\">new caste of ants<\/a>: robber ants.\u00a0 These specialize in stealing food from other ant colonies.\u00a0 But here&#8217;s where I start to goggle:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The thieving ants are not merely foraging ants that get their food from other colonies, says [Terrence] McGlynn [of California State University in Carson]. \u201cWhen you watch thieves, they act like they\u2019re working to avoid detection,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen disturbed, they\u2019re more likely to freeze, and then move in the opposite direction. If you grab them, they drop their stolen food. Once they get in the clear, they scamper more quickly, while regular non-thieving foragers will hang onto their food, as they know it was rightfully acquired.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>OK, I suppose I could just take it as Dr. McGlynn anthropomorphizing inappropriately.\u00a0 In fact, I&#8217;m sure that&#8217;s right.\u00a0 But I couldn&#8217;t help but immediately speculate this might be evidence against free will &#8211; because how could something so bloody small have a sense of right and wrong?<\/p>\n<p>Well, of course, if &#8220;right &amp; wrong&#8221; has a survival characteristic &#8211; and it should &#8211; then it makes sense that it could be evolved into a genetically determined behavior.<\/p>\n<p>But still &#8230; and it&#8217;s cool anyways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NewScientist (17 October 2015, paywall) comes up with a new caste of ants: robber ants.\u00a0 These specialize in stealing food from other ant colonies.\u00a0 But here&#8217;s where I start to goggle: The thieving ants are not merely foraging ants that get their food from other colonies, says [Terrence] McGlynn [of \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/11\/04\/burglar-ants\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2662"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2664,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662\/revisions\/2664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}