ant queen

And second, that’s not accurate. They think they’re dead because they’re covered in the pheromone that says ‘I’m dead’, and ants see by pheromones. Thats like a human walking around, smelling like a corpse, looking like a corpse, and being treated like a corpse. If that happened to someone, they would be like

1: “Am I dead?”

2: “There’s something SERIOUSLY wrong with me.”

2: it’s in their instincts(WHICH IS NOT THE SAME AS NO FREE WILL. We have instincts to share stuff, but we can choose not to. An ant is perfectly capable of choosing whether to turn right or left without any guidance. Same applies to more complex scenarios.

1: There’s a thing called reciprocal altruism. It essentially operates like this:

If I [have food] and I give some to someone who has [no food], when I have [no food] and they [have food], they will give some to me. They operate with the colony because it assures their own survival.

1; yes that is true but humans also practice it and there are humans who choose to do otherwise because they unlike ants make choices that are not always beneficial to the greater whole

2: In this video, right at the start of the eusociality part, it explains inclusive fitness. Basically, the ants disperse more genetic material by helping their mom instead of laying eggs themselves, which is why this method of breeding hasn’t died out yet.

2: There actually are instances of ants being selfish, though only in select colonies in select circumstances. In certain species, workers maintain working reproductive organs and sometimes choose to lay their own eggs at the expense of the colony(though they are usually killed/destroyed by other workers to maintain colony order), and in some fire ant colonies where there are multiple queens, one queen will try to kill another, in an attempt for her genes to get a better chance, even though more queens means more workers means more food for all queens.

i am speaking specifically of ants whose queen is the only one that breeds because when they act it would be them being selfish as opposed to a new mutation that could be passed down making them act differently. i have said a few times i believe the queens are the only members with free will but i probably should have made that clearer. i speak specifically of non breeding worker ants.

3. The shift in a worker ant’s job over its lifetime is known as age polyethism. Newly emerged workers, often pale, begin their lives performing the safest tasks deep within the nest, such as nursing the brood and cleaning. This initial phase allows them to gain experience and for their exoskeletons to fully harden. As the ant matures, it gradually moves outward, transitioning to tasks like nest construction. The final, and riskiest, stage involves foraging and colony defense outside the nest.

This age-based specialization maximizes the worker’s lifetime contribution; if an older ant dies while foraging, the colony loses a less valuable individual than a younger worker. For some tasks, physical capability also drives this progression, as seen in leaf-cutter ants. Younger workers, called callows, may lack the muscle force and rigidity required for the demanding task of cutting leaves.

2: Thank you for clarifying

Because these animals are so tiny and move so quickly and live in huge swarms, it’s hard to differentiate them. Speaking from personal experience here, I had an ant farm once, tried to name one, lost it immediately. But, one of these ants was slightly off-color. I nicknamed her Rose(cause she had a bit of a rose color.). After a while, I realized she had a bit of her own personality. She liked to stay up in the top left corner, didn’t like to be around some other ants.

Another big area is sensory input. Ants have terrible hearing, so they can’t exactly receive any signals we put out to them, and we can’t receive any signals/sounds they put out to us. This makes it hard to tell if they have actual personalities, since we can’t collect any info on them besides the superficial.

I think if we were actually able to distinguish them, you would see that they are individuals, but it’s just hard to tell them apart. To use your own example, Mole rats are virtually identical, but can kinds understand basic things(I think so at least, I’m the ant dude not the mole rat dude.), so it’s easier to get info on them.