[HN Gopher] The saga of the cannibal ants in a Soviet nuclear bu...
___________________________________________________________________
The saga of the cannibal ants in a Soviet nuclear bunker (2019)
Author : mkotowski
Score : 194 points
Date : 2021-09-20 05:06 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| otikik wrote:
| > "They are doing the best they can, surrounded by dying."
|
| That's what I think future humans will say about us, too
| (assuming that humanity survives puberty).
| josefresco wrote:
| So the lower colony eats fallen ants, but not all otherwise
| there'd be no lower colony.
|
| If they were stacking bodies, was this excess food or parts they
| didn't eat?
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| This reminds me of a documentary about the wood ants in Europe.
| Some war between nests and others abide with and tolerate each
| other. Same species, and there seems to be no rhyme or reason
| regarding the line between the two different ant cultures.
|
| It was this David Attenborough documentary:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ0DxSujfIU
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Life finds a way.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| The ants that fall below don't have queens or reproduce in any
| way. So it is really a colony? It's just a free-for-all ant-eat-
| ant battle for temporary survival.
| db48x wrote:
| Yes. The queen doesn't give orders, she just lays eggs. All the
| other ants decide individually what to do, based on what they
| can see and smell in the area. A colony without reproductives
| is still a colony, even if it is probably dying.
|
| Ants recognize each other as friendly by smell, so the ants in
| the lower colony weren't fighting each other. They were doing
| all the ordinary ant activities, just in a location that wasn't
| great for the overall survivability of the whole colony (no
| food down there to bring back to the queen, for example).
| gpderetta wrote:
| That's the bit I'm missing: which ants are they eating if
| they are integrating all new falling ants in the underground
| colony? They just eat the otherwise dead?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > They just eat the otherwise dead?
|
| Probably. Many ants do that.
| simonh wrote:
| We could think of it as an extension of the parent colony. They
| still specialise, build, organise their waste and resources.
| Basically they still behave in as normal a way as they can
| given the limitations of their environment.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Well it worked and it seems they actually had some form of
| organization. So I think it's fair to call it a colony.
| thih9 wrote:
| Basically:
|
| "Ants built a mound near a hole, some started falling down and
| couldn't get back up; with no food, lower ants had to eat ant
| corpses; the lower ants also built a mound (with no pupas) and
| dragged corpses that have been eaten onto a pile; later
| scientists removed the obstacle so that ants that fall down could
| get back up".
|
| I'm a bit disappointed that the "soviet nuclear bunker" didn't
| play a bigger role.
| make3 wrote:
| didnt they also install a long 2 by 4
| thih9 wrote:
| That's what I meant by: "later scientists removed the
| obstacle so that ants that fall down could get back up";
|
| i.e. scientists "removed the obstacle" by installing the 2/4;
| apologies if this is worded in an unintuitive way.
| xwdv wrote:
| There was one ant that fell in while carrying a pupa. That pupa
| ended up being born in the darkness of this hell hole prison,
| never knowing any other kind of life. So when the wood 2x4 came
| down from the sky the other ants were scared and skeptical. But
| this pupa was not afraid and would be the first to climb it.
| When he reached the top, he saw the light for the first time
| and finally knew the world that had been kept from him all his
| life. When his brothers saw he had succeeded, they followed his
| scent trail upward, and that's how the pupa became the new
| leader of an army brought out from the darkness.
| sneak wrote:
| I thought you were going for allegory of the cave, and were a
| little sad when you didn't.
| solarmist wrote:
| Which allegory is that? Plato's cave?
|
| Oh, wow, I didn't realize it was called "the allegory of
| the cave."
|
| That's such a bleak view of humanity. I don't think it's
| quite that bad in general, but I can certainly see the
| inspiration for it even nowadays.
| vijayr02 wrote:
| Let me guess: the ant was Bane and the pupa was Miranda Tate
| / Talia al Ghul
|
| https://chrisnolan.fandom.com/wiki/Miranda_Tate
| wikidani wrote:
| This makes me think of metro 2033 so bad, even to the dark post
| soviet bunker and admitedly cannibalistic feeling. I wonder what
| could have happened if a queen ant was introduced to the colony
| as a sort of experiment
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The title made me think of "It Came From Red Alert!". A secret
| mission in C&C: Red Alert (Counterstrike) that involves fighting
| giants ants in an abandoned soviet base.
| laputan_machine wrote:
| Which is a nod to the game 'It Came From The Desert'
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Came_from_the_Desert)... I
| think I'll have to re-install both :)
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Isn't it from It or They Came From Outer Space?
| dekhn wrote:
| I'm still trying to track down a scifi book I read as a kid
| where a rich guy buys a huge aquarium that has four ant
| colonies at the corners. They fight and eventually I think one
| escapes and kills the owner.
| 303bookworm wrote:
| "Sandkings" - it's a very famous short story by George R.R
| Martin. Also had a tv episode of outer limits based on it
| dekhn wrote:
| Thanks so much! I've since read other George R.R. Martin
| scifi (from the same universe, it appears), I really wish
| he had stuck to that.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Which comes from "It came from the desert" videogame series
| [0].
|
| I played it as a very young kid (not knowing English! I don't
| even know how I managed to do anything), and it was fantastic.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Came_from_the_Desert
| bb101 wrote:
| Amazed that the author didn't include a reference to H.G. Wells'
| Time Machine. It's a formic parallel to the Eloi and Morlocks.
| jakedata wrote:
| This sounds vaguely like a sci-fi premise where some sympathetic
| interdimensional researcher places an interdimensional yardstick
| (the higher dimensions use imperial units) between our isolated,
| diminished existence and the place where we can bask in the sun
| and live on honeydew excreted from aphid butts. I know I often
| wonder if the world we live in is some sort of abandoned Soviet-
| era nuclear bunker analogue.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Rather, a dark allegory on life under the communism
| bsiemon wrote:
| or under capitalism.
| itisit wrote:
| That would be set in an Amazon fulfillment center. And
| instead of ants, people.
| jakedata wrote:
| And, what is to stop the same ant from falling back down the
| hole again after glimpsing the sun?
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| I can recommend you to read Hermit and Six-Toes by Victor
| Pelevin.
| chrisgd wrote:
| Really fascinating article. I also went for a rabbit hole by
| clicking the tag "cannibals"; there are more articles available
| than I thought there would be.
| billsmithaustin wrote:
| I wanted the first ant to climb out of the bunker, find the home
| nest destroyed, and yell, "You finally really did it. You
| maniacs! You blew it up!"
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Extremely fascinating! This feels like the real life equivalent
| of a horror game scenario.
| disease wrote:
| Lots of sci-fi reference in the comments but the first thing I
| thought of when reading the article was the movie Pandorum.
| Litost wrote:
| With a title mentioning cannibal ants and a bunker, I'm surprised
| no-one has referenced Phase IV yet, but given it was a box office
| flop from 1974. I've not watched it in so long, but I seem to
| remember it being quite scary as a kid and the fact I still
| remember it now. On the offchance anyone remembers it or watches
| it I'd be curious what you think?
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070531/
| trylfthsk wrote:
| Reminds me a bit of Greg Egan's Incandescence - in addition to
| some other great comparisons itt.
| ilamont wrote:
| The reference to the experiment involving an ant colony
| established by humans on a small Finnish island surviving thanks
| to a single tree reminded me of another fantastic insect survival
| story from the Pacific. Via the NPR account of the 2001
| discovery:
|
| _What 's more, for years this place had a secret. At 225 feet
| above sea level, hanging on the rock surface, there is a small,
| spindly little bush, and under that bush, a few years ago, two
| climbers, working in the dark, found something totally improbable
| hiding in the soil below. How it got there, we still don't know._
|
| Read the story and check out the pictures of the island. It's
| amazing.
|
| Story:
| https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/02/24/147367644/s...
|
| Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3651551
| marcod wrote:
| You had me at "another fantastic insect survival story" :)
|
| Thanks for sharing!
| daveslash wrote:
| Well then - I have _" another fantastic insect survival
| story"_ for ya.
|
| Movile Cave in Romania. " _Discovered in 1986, it is notable
| for its unique groundwater ecosystem abundant in hydrogen
| sulfide and carbon dioxide, but low in oxygen. Life in the
| cave has been separated from the outside for the past 5.5
| million years and it is based completely on chemosynthesis
| rather than photosynthesis. The cave is known to contain 57
| animal species. Of these, 37 are endemic_ " ~Wikipedia.
|
| https://geoera.eu/blog/movile-cave-romania/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movile_Cave
| strogonoff wrote:
| For another story of how ship-borne rats wreaked havoc on an
| island's ecosystem, see SG&SS islands[0].
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Georgia_and_the_South_Sa...
| virgulino wrote:
| Same story on Gough Island, a few miles to the north:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gough_Island#Invasive_species
|
| At this very moment, there is a scientific sailing
| expedition:
|
| https://youtu.be/DSulas1b6aw
|
| Part of "Saving species from extinction: The Gough Island
| Restoration Programme":
|
| https://www.goughisland.com/
| billsmithaustin wrote:
| The Deus ex machina ending ruined the whole thing.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-09-21 23:02 UTC)