Everybody knows that war is always going to lead to death and most likely destruction. But are we the only species that have “wars.” According to some emerging research ants have a tendency to go to war against other colonies in their area. If you actually think about it for a second, it does make sense.
Some species attack and take over neighboring colonies. Others are fewer expansionists but just as aggressive; they invade colonies to steal eggs or larvae, which they either eat or raise as workers/slaves. (Ant)
Not only do humans share their aggressiveness with ants, but social patterns as well. Ants have a well organized social structure that allows them build their ant colonies and function as they do. Humans also have a social “norms” that they follow. Most humans will generally follow the crowd. Solomon Asch did some a very interesting experiment to determine how likely someone was to conform to a group.
Imagine yourself in the following situation: You sign up for a psychology experiment, and on a specified date you and seven others whom you think are also subjects arrive and are seated at a table in a small room. You don't know it at the time, but the others are actually associates of the experimenter, and their behavior has been carefully scripted. You're the only real subject. The experimenter arrives and tells you that the study in which you are about to participate concerns people's visual judgments. She places two cards before you. The card on the left contains onevertical line. The card on the right displays three lines of varying length.
The experimenter asks all of you, one at a time, to choose which of the three lines on the right card matches the length of the line on the left card. The task is repeated several times with different cards. On some occasions the other "subjects" unanimously choose the wrong line. It is clear to you that they are wrong, but they have all given the same answer.
What would you do? Would you go along with the majority opinion, or would you "stick to your guns" and trust your own eyes? (Solomon)
Though most people would say they would trust their own eyes, Solomon Asch’s experiment proved otherwise.
To Asch's surprise, 37 of the 50 subjects conformed to the majority at least once, and 14 of them conformed on more than 6 of the 12 trials. When faced with a unanimous wrong answer by the other group members, the mean subject conformed on 4 of the 12 trials. Asch was disturbed by these results: "The tendency to conformity in our society is so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black. This is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct."(Solomon)
After looking at such a simple experiment to see how important it is for humans to conform to the majority, leads us back to the ants. In the ant’s social structure not conforming to the rest of the populous means death. In our society, not following social norms (thing that the normal populous does and considers normal) means being looked at as strange or weird.
For the most average adult, their day goes day-in and day-out doing pretty much the same thing over and over again. For some its wake up, eat breakfast, go to work, eat lunch, go back to work, leave work, come home, eat dinner, relax and go to bed to wake up the next day and do the same thing. Ants lives are continuously the same thing. Each has their own specific job that they must carry out. Workers work, queens have babies, warriors defend, and gatherers gather.
Can humans who are the dominant species on earth really share such basic patterns in social networking and aggressiveness with ants? Ants are such a simple and small animal to compare humans to. But humans are aggressive; anyone can see that by looking at our history. Not only do both species share aggressiveness but humans share their ability and need to conform as well. Though you can easily pick these two species apart in other ways, like their ability to hold eight times their own weight, but one cannot ignore the similarities that humans do share with ants.
Works Cited:
“Ant” Wikipedia 6 December 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant#Cooperation_and_competition
“Solomon Asch Experiment (1958): A study of conformity” Age-of-the-sage.org http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/social/asch_conformity.html
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