[DIYbio] Re: Uplifting Ants

You might reach out to Prof. Mike Rose at UCI. https://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=5261  He's the evolutionary biologist who raised the Methuselah Flies for a dozen years or more, repeatedly selecting for the oldest. He might have thoughts on how to drive their genetics.

You might also be interested in Adrian Tchaikovski's Children of Time, which depicts the human-orchestrated uplifting of spiders and ants on a distant planet, and their later encounters with their human gods. https://smile.amazon.com/Children-of-Time/dp/B06ZXTHNSJ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1545062319&sr=8-1&keywords=Adrian+Tchaikovsky

Cheers,
James

On Sunday, December 16, 2018 at 4:55:15 AM UTC-6, Ozymandias wrote:
Inspired by books like African Genesis and The Territorial Imperative by Robert Ardrey, Sandkings by GRRM and Hunger Games.


I thought about the following experiment:

2 or more ant colonies are connected to a "battlefield chamber". The ant colonies are "starved" and food is placed into battlefield chamber and the ants have to battle for survival.

"War" has always been fantasized by various people like Robert Ardrey to be a keystone in the transformation from apes to humans. That is debatable but it has definitely proven to be a factor in technological progress in the 20th century.

Alpha decaying low radioactive minerals could also be placed into the colonies to increase mutations. Another idea is to provide the colonies with little ant swords or other kind of weapons. What kind of change will happen to the ants after a couple generations? Nothing or will this smart species who is able to build "cities" with the division of labour be able to build a real civilization?

Only time can tell.

Any input?

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