When you blindly follow others, there are consequencesĪrmy ants are blind, relying on pheromones to track the ones in front, if one ant intersects with its old trail, it results in a circular death trap where they spiral until they die from exhaustion pic.twitter. Some of them consider it to be simply an interesting tidbit about the world around us but for others, it is unthinkable that such an advanced system could break down and fail. This network, however, consists of rather weak ties, as it is very possible for a cluster of ants to break off into one of these “ant mills” and be completely separated from the rest of the swarm.” Photo: fascinating piece of nature has gotten the interest of many people online where this video has been shared. “ are tied together through the pheromone trail each emits and an evolutionary compulsion. Photo: Cornell University blog post explains in this way: The ants are simply following the pheromones and they have no idea they are actually marching in a circle. This is a system that has worked for millions of years but unfortunately, it is also a system that can lead to one of these death traps. In other words, once one ant builds the path, the other ants blindly follow. Photo: to Science Direct, ants don’t have the best eyesight and they have to use pheromones in order to mark a path. You might be wondering why they do this and what lessons can be learned from it. It’s amazing when you see the video and how these ants end up in a circular trap that has no end. Photo: Wikimedia commonsĪlthough they may be busy getting from one place to another, there are times when those colonies of ants swirl in an endless circle and eventually, will tire themselves out and die. In the video that you see below, however, it is obvious that things are not quite going right. They also have a queen, and it seems as if they scurry about without ever running into each other. They have their own assigned place, and each worker does their job. Worker ants are manipulated in this manner to evidence the personal worth and self-interested development of senior ants.If you’ve never had an opportunity to study the working structure of an ant colony, you will likely find it quite amazing. The worker ants are told “your highly sought-after place in the pile isn’t totally secure but, as it’s all warm and cozy, you would be well advised to keep quiet and get on with it.” When workers question the raison d’être of these senior ants they’re usually gagged. Senior ants fail to support their workers, they fail to brief and train them correctly and they also manipulate statistics and use PR sound bite opportunities for personal gain. Its symptoms manifest themselves in the following manner senior ants keep worker ants in the dark and feed them a constant diet of bullshit, with monotonous regularity. Many ants are ‘carriers’ of the bug, one which tends to proliferate with increasing seniority. The DBS virus attacks the ADC immune system of the ants. This highly viral bug, although carried by individuals, has a profound and debilitating effect upon the group of long-suffering ants. Pretty depressing stuff indeed… Unfortunately, the ‘ADC’ infection is usually compounded by a liberal smattering of ‘DBS’ virus. Maybe you’re an ‘ant’ trudging along within the circle, finding it difficult to break away from the norm but wanting to go and look for that pheromone trail. Because it’s how we do things round here. How often do we unquestioningly follow the ‘ant’ in front and do what we’ve always done, for that reason alone? Because it’s the policy. The powerful and emblematic image of the ant death circle made me immediately think of parallels in conventional performance management – the self-perpetuating downward spiral of targets, binary comparisons, internalised peer vs peer competition, and so on. 1 The phenomenon is a side effect of the self-organizing structure of ant colonies. It has been reproduced in laboratories and has been produced in ant colony simulations. The ants then blindly follow this circular trail until they die of exhaustion. This circle is commonly known as a 'death spiral' because the ants might eventually die of exhaustion. Each ant then follows the ant in front and the group forms a continuously rotating circle. What happens is that ants sometimes lose the pheromone track laid down for them to follow, and veer off course. On the train to work this morning, a friend told me about a fascinating phenomenon known as the ‘Ant Death Circle’ (also called the ‘Ant Death Spiral’ or ‘Ant Mill’).
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