Originally published at: Watch: army ant death spiral | Boing Boing
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Amazing, never knew it was a thing.
Hmm, if I could only imagine something this was analogous to.
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Do you want time to be a flat circle? Because this is how you get time to be a flat circle.
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I was wondering exactly the same. 
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Bonus:
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Maybe this should replace the lemmings running off a cliff myth.
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Yea, right? What could it be? What? Could? It? Be? [The brow wrinkles. The head tilts in thought. The lips pensively purse.]
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Mosh pit for ants!
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At a tropical field station 2 decades ago I was watching a colony of leaf cutter ants which are serious trail followers. The prof grabbed a worker ant and moved it away from the line to show how it refinds the trail. To my surprise it intstantly started walking in an expanding spiral until it found the scent trail again.
This “death spiral” is likely from a combination of an outward spiral searching behavior paired with the normal pheromone trail following behavior such that the the circle becomes the new trail that they all follow. Maybe it could happen if a group were all knocked far away from the original trail at once and started circling together to find a nonexistent trail only to instead make a death spiral path following each others’ scent trail. neat
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The mpeg compression hardly knows what to do with this video; it’s like a series of progressively blurring keyframes. Amazing.
contestant: “Ooo! I know! Late-stage capitalism! Is it late-stage capitalism?”
announcer: “That’s right! it IS late-stage capitalism!”
contestant: “What do I win?”
announcer: “You win a shiatty job with no benefits and no possiblity to move into rentier class or even the home-ownership class!”
contestant: “Uh, yay?”
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