Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!shelby!unixhub!ditka!zorch!xanthian From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: comp.theory.cell-automata Subject: Re: Something for the ants to do Message-ID: <1991Feb19.121307.29165@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Date: 19 Feb 91 12:13:07 GMT References: <1991Feb18.001127.16317@news.cs.indiana.edu> Sender: news@ditka.chicago.com (Pulitzer at ditka) Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix Lines: 32 A couple of things still seem to be lacking to have anthills that do interesting things: 1) Much bigger anthills; it is a bit much to expect behavior networks typical of colonies of thousands of individuals to be emulated by colonies of seven individuals. 2) Extra-genetic differentiation of individuals within a colony: at least bees, and I think ants also, raise up grossly different individuals from similarly genetically endowed eggs by particular feeding schedules/choices, and the colony is based on separation of tasks to suitable individuals. Thus, an individual ant's genetic complement should represent a variety of possible mature individuals. 3) Which brings up the need to emulate nurturing behavior. 4) And also cooperative food gathering; bee and ant colonies contain some individuals who function as the colony's liver or gut; create food that can only be digested to utility for other ants by ants who can't gather it, and too big for an individual ant to drag home. 5) And allow for this very low level specialization: locomotor, digestive, reproductive, etc. with tradeoffs and improved efficiency in the area of specialization. 6) Folks who haven't, should read Douglas Hofstadter's Goedel, Escher, Bach, An Eternal Golden Braid for motivational material on ant colony functioning, especially when trying to envision things an ant colony could do. Kent, the man from xanth.