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Living beyond the limits of survival: wood ants trapped in a gigantic pitfall (2016)(jhr.pensoft.net)

181 points by hitekker 1 day ago | 60 comments

Well I'll be.

At least two of the authors are also avid chiropterologists, with an understood penchant for bunkers and other such spaces.

One summer in my late teens I sat with two of them in an urban park in NW Poland drinking beer, watching bats getting caught in a net half-submerged in water near a bridge and engaging in impromptu comedy with passers-by asking questions like "good catch? any fish?". Good times.

Engaging in field research is a wonderfully rewarding experience, a great way to spend time, meet people and do something meaningful at the same time. If you've never done it - do it. There are plenty of volunteering opportunities - you don't need to be a scientist. Birding, insects, marine life, whatever. Citizen science is also great, but if you get a chance to work alongside scientists, it gets even better. 10/10 good walk, unspoilt.

[–] quibono 1 day ago

I love this!

> A ‘colony’ of Formica polyctena was found in January 2013, during winter counts of hibernating bats in the underground bunker.

And all makes sense

[–] numeri 1 day ago

How did you get involved with field-working scientists, what initiated the social connection or desire to do so?

[–] wowczarek 1 day ago

It's how I grew up. Both of my parents are naturalists and our home often served as a base camp for assorted weirdos counting, collecting or surveying things and I would have probably done the same if it wasn't for what this guy Torvalds unleashed in the 90s.

[–] AlecSchueler 1 day ago

Where might one get started with citizen science as an outsider?

[–] lukan 1 day ago

Nature clubs, in germany the BUND for instance. They organize guided tours and introductions, are full of enthusiasts and are happy for any newcomer to tell them all about the various ways to participate.

(This is also where ecology academics do networking)

[–] alexey-salmin 1 day ago

> The ‘colony’ has evidently produced no offspring, which is due to low (though relatively stable) temperatures and scanty food in the bunker.

Isn't it due to the lack of the queen? Colony of worker ants is a dead end

[–] donkey_brains 1 day ago

They mentioned that a queen or brood ant might fall into the bunker occasionally but the low temperatures would prevent breeding in that case.

[–] esaym 1 day ago

I think some acrobat ant colonies have more than one queen.

[–] ilamont 1 day ago

The amount of potential food in the bunker, suitable for wood ants, is not known, but the smaller arthropods living there could hardly be enough to allow the workers both temperature regulation of the mound and feeding of offspring.

Is cannibalism a possibility?

[–] unrented7977 1 day ago

Certainly, but not in any meaningfully sustainable sense. Entropy rules all. Only a fraction of energy and nutrients are recoverable from food. And once an organism spends energy, it's gone forever.

Without a continuous external supply of food, the colony will starve in short order.

[–] block_dagger 1 day ago

But there's a continuous external supply of new ants, hence a food supply, if I understand parent comment correctly.

[–] shrx 1 day ago

I suppose over time the mass of dead ants will start to decompose into a fertile medium providing energy for other species, which in turn might be foraged by the ants?

[–] gwbas1c 1 day ago

This article keeps coming to the front page every few years; and every few years I keep opening it to look at the pictures.

It's just that fascinating!

[–] heikkilevanto 1 day ago

I wish the scientists had left a plank or a string leading to the ventilation hole, so the ants could get out, at least to forage for more food. But then again, it would have spoiled this "natural" experiment.

[–] Nicholas_C 1 day ago

Perhaps entomologists have a Prime Directive.

[–] beng-nl 22 hours ago

Yes. The prime directive is not to obstruct the system that is a source of research papers ;-)

[–] shmeeed 1 day ago

I still wonder why they don't just leave? I mean, aren't ants capable of walking on the ceiling and up the pipe? What keeps them?

[–] unrented7977 1 day ago

They can't climb all surfaces. They especially can't climb on dirty and dusty surfaces or crumbling paint.

But more than that, they fell into the hole without leaving a pheromone trail to follow back to the nest. Without that, they have no way of navigating. Only random exploration could get them back out, and that would only help one ant at a time.

[–] TedDoesntTalk 1 day ago

Picture of the bunker where the ants live: https://jhr.pensoft.net/article/9096/zoom/fig/11/

[–] dsr_ 1 day ago

I'm glad I don't think that ants have self-awareness, because this sounds like hell.

[–] x______________ 1 day ago

I'm sorry[0].

0 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50312658

[–] varjag 1 day ago

A unique accumulation of workers (‘colony’) of the wood ant Formica polyctena Först., trapped within an old bunker for storing nuclear weapons, is described. The source of the ‘colony’ is a large colony nesting outdoors, on top of the bunker. Individuals that have fallen down through a ventilation pipe are not able to find their way back to the mother nest.

The dictatorship of proletariat but for ants, and inside a Soviet bunker of course. Sometimes I see why people find the idea that there's no God incredulous.

[–] quibono 1 day ago

> Two underground two-level ammunition bunkers, 300 metres apart (26 m × 42 m each), which constituted the core of the base and where nuclear weapons were kept, have survived (Sadowski 2011, Rutko 2015).

Interestingly this is a "Soviet" bunker in western Poland. A Warsaw Pact bunker?

Also, I didn't think that Soviet policy was to store nuclear weapons in Poland - not sure if this quote is accurate or if this was just more common than I had thought?

[–] m4rtink 1 day ago

It was likely similar to the warhead storage bunkers in Czech Republic (or Czechoslovaki back then), most likely intended for tactical nuclear weapons, like Scuds or maybe for aircraft as well:

https://www.expats.cz/czech-news/article/top-secret-cold-war...

https://www.rferl.org/a/24993733.html

https://www.euronews.com/2021/07/18/czech-cold-war-depot-for...

Of course the Soviets (who were exclusively running and guarding those bunkers back then) never confirmed what they were used to or if they contained live nuclear weapons. But it is clear that this was the intended use case, given the storage conditions, the expens to build & run those as well as how heavily they were guarded.

[–] ahoka 1 day ago

Same in Hungary: https://worldwidepanorama.org/wwp1208/BanfalvyZoltan-5060.ht...

"This is a special storage facility, type Granit 2 (or 3), designed for A-bombs."

Not sure if it's true, but the article says these nukes were meant for Italy.

[–] quibono 1 day ago

I find these bunkers fascinating. I've always wanted to explore one.

Amazing how much money was wasted on these only to be staffed for years and then abandoned.

[–] t-3 1 day ago

Successful military spending always appears to be "wasted" if you think the point is to use weapons. War means that your defense strategy has failed, peace means that it has succeeded. Never having to use what was stored in those bunkers means that they served their purpose.

[–] dripdry45 1 day ago

By this logic people can justify almost anything. I can say that we should’ve sent dinosaur clones to the moon because otherwise something bad is going to happen. Then we send the dinosaurs to the moon and nothing bad happens, and it justifies the action.

It’s the same insanity gun owners use justifying bringing weapons everywhere they go.

I simply don’t buy the argument, though I do see your point about deterrence

[–] bell-cot 1 day ago

Might you have heard the old saw "Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands"?

Military spending is similar - you want security at the minimum cost.

Unfortunately, military conflicts (real and potential) have vastly more complexity and uncertainty than the gravity, wind, traffic loads, etc. that a bridge has to withstand. And even a nation's best experts (generally its senior military officers) generally have motives at odds with minimum-cost security for their nation.

[–] wffurr 1 day ago

Si vis pacem para bellum.

[–] shilgapira 1 day ago

No snark intended, but if you see his point then you do seem to buy his argument

[–] genxy 1 day ago

I have a rock that cures cancer.

[–] varjag 1 day ago

People think of Warsaw Pact as an alliance akin to NATO but opposite. In reality it was essentially Soviet Army padded with national units of subjugated countries. For instance there is NATO HQ as everyone knows but Warsaw Pact headquarters never existed: the chain of command started in Ministry of Defense in Moscow.

And yes tactical nukes were forward deployed to most Pact countries.

[–] frrlpp 12 hours ago

People think of NATO as an alliance akin to NATO but opposite. In reality it was essentially US Army padded with national units of subjugated countries. For instance there is NATO HQ as everyone knows but the chain of command started in Washington.

[–] varjag 10 hours ago

Literally no country was forced into NATO. Quite the opposite, the eastward members were banging the door to get in and were admitted only because no-one in the West could fathom aggressive Russia again. Warsaw Pact in contrast bided its time invading its members who tried to get out.

[–] Viliam1234 9 hours ago

> Warsaw Pact in contrast bided its time invading its members who tried to get out.

That's the irony -- the only countries Warsaw Pact members were invaded by were other Warsaw Pact members. (Too bad they couldn't call other Warsaw Pact members to protect them.)

[–] Viliam1234 9 hours ago

You probably think you're being either smart or funny, but you are neither.

NATO and Warsaw Pact are not some kind of mirror opposite (except for being enemies in the cold war). Countries join NATO voluntarily, for example Sweden and Finland recently. Countries have joined Warsaw Pact by being occupied by the Soviet Army.

> US Army padded with national units of subjugated countries

Please go ahead and explain how USA has subjugated Sweden and Finland recently, after failing to subjugate them during the previous decades.

[–] sandworm101 1 day ago

By "nuclear weapon" most people think of a bomb, but it can also mean the non-bomb portions of nuclear delivery systems such as rocket/missile bodies and aircraft. In times of rising conflict they could "forward-deploy" the warheads from Russia to be mated to rockets and such already in the field. So the peacetime "no nukes in Poland" policy can be true even though "nuclear weapons" were already waiting in bunkers there.

The west did basically the same thing. Not every "nuclear weapon bunker" at every American base actually held warheads.

[–] m4rtink 1 day ago

In the Czechoslovak case those bunkers were definitely for the warheads - far too small for a whole Scud missile, air conditioned, etc. The delivery mechanisms were notionally conventional & are documented as stationed elsewhere.

It was in those bunkers where the warheads would be (were ?) stored in the time of crisis as a forward deployment.

[–] dghughes 1 day ago

The ants are two weeks away from going nuclear.

[–] tristramb 1 day ago

Ant expert E.O.Wilson once said of communism: "Great idea. Wrong species"

[–] Arodex 1 day ago

Funny you say that when literally a few stories away on HN first page, you have this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50388122

[–] Viliam1234 9 hours ago

The link you posted was about the work of volunteers.

In communist regimes, the people were anything but volunteers.

Linux or Wikipedia do not have soldiers protecting their boundaries, shooting in the back everyone who tries to escape the "workers' paradise".

[–] pessimizer 1 day ago

What does the "dictatorship of the proletariat" have to do with a bunch of ants falling through a hole in the ground? Is it because worker ants are called "worker" ants? Is a dictatorship when you fall down a hole and are left without a queen or any resources?

God could be imagined illustrating why we need queens and resources in a Soviet bunker because the Soviets believed there shouldn't be queens, or resources? Did the Soviets actually believe that there shouldn't be any natural resources? Are human "queens" our only source of reproduction?

This is really supposed to be an instructive metaphor for what happens when people who work are left to their own devices in a barren place, and that's supposed to make us reflect on the Soviet Union?

Don't worry, I know the answer: They're called "workers" and the situation is bad. The Soviets said that they were a society of "workers" and the Soviets were bad. Deep.

[–] varjag 1 day ago

I grew up in the Soviet Union so am entitled to whatever dab on communism can come up with.

[–] kian 1 day ago

name checks out

[–] circlefavshape 1 day ago

Maybe eventually the earthen mound they have constructed will reach the level of the hole they're falling through, and they'll be able to rejoin the main colony?

[–] neuroticnews25 1 day ago

Flat parts of the earthen mound and the floor of the adjacent spaces were carpeted with bodies of dead ants. Locally the deposits were a few centimetres thick. (...) the number of dead Formica polyctena workers probably amounted to about two million. The cemeteries comprised also remnants of other insects, most probably those caught by foragers of the free-living upper colony that had fallen down. Of other ants, only a head of the Leptothorax sp. worker was found.

"Ah yes, that small speck of chitin among 2 million other corpses is obviously a head of the Leptothorax sp. worker."

[–] donkey_brains 1 day ago

I also found this part hilarious. It’s not even a needle in a haystack, more like one specific needle in a…big pile of needles, I guess. Except the needles are microscopic, fragile and fragmentary.

[–] ForHackernews 1 day ago

Presumably entomologists are good at accurately identifying small bits of ants.

[–] nickdothutton 1 day ago

[narrator] This was not a story about ants.

[–] donkey_brains 1 day ago

It’s definitely a metaphor for something, but I don’t know what.

[–] andyjohnson0 1 day ago

Human looks around office. Single access-controlled door. Windows obscured by blinds. Suspended ceiling with lighting panels. Short sightlines due to desk partitions.

Shudders and turns back to the screens and the work. Can't leave yet.

[–] xp84 1 day ago

I too was thinking of how we’ve also lost our way and seem to be completely in the dark and unable to even realize what’s wrong and how to solve the problems. We are just continuing to build the mound because that’s supposed to be our job.

[–] nickdothutton 15 hours ago

Like a cargo cult.

[–] faiouhsodivwer 1 day ago

Wow, life will find its way

[–] bell-cot 1 day ago

116 comments back in 2019 -

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21481852

[–] ralfd 1 day ago

Needless sensationalism: I didnt find the term “cannibalistic” on the source page.

[–] pessimizer 1 day ago

"Living beyond the limits of survival" is certainly dramatic enough, and there's no hyperbole in it.