Can people make an ideal society by learning from ants?

As a method for systematically observing the activities of ants, we use RFID tags. The size of each chip of the RFID tags is 0.5 mm × 0.5 mm, which is the world’s smallest chip, and each chip is attached to each ant as a tag.

Then, sensors are installed at important points such as a location between their nest and a feeding site. Accordingly, when and where each ant has passed is recorded, and the record is integrated into the big data of ant society.

As a result, various things that had not been known have been discovered.

For example, it seems that in an ant colony, for each task, there are ants who are hardworking and ants that are lazy. In recent years, a phenomenon has been reported both inside and outside Japan in which, when the hardworking ants are taken out of the colony, the ants that had been lazy until then start working. This is a mechanism in which, when the ones who have borne a role disappear, other ones start working, and we call this the “labor-compensation property.”

The point is that the optimal personnel take on the task so that, when viewed as a whole group, better work efficiency is maintained.

Furthermore, a “labor-cooperation property” was observed in which a fixed number of worker groups in the colony actively work for a certain period of time, and then, the working ants are replaced in other groups for a short period of time.

This means that even while the workers are replaced, the colony as a whole is always operated in a stable manner.

Let me repeat: The ants act as described above not by following instructions from someone else but based on their own judgment made in a timely manner.

Of course, the brains of ants are small and cannot perform complicated information processing. However, in a group, the ants can realize a highly advanced social system.

Attempts have long been made to explain the activities of ants in a group, and it has been learned that the expression of the “labor-compensation property” described above can be reproduced with high accuracy by a computer simulation based on mathematical models. However, careful examination and discussion are necessary for several of the hypotheses used for the models: that is, the mechanism of how each ant makes a judgment, how information is transmitted among individual ants, and so on.

One of the hypotheses is that the level of sensitivity to a risk to the entire colony differs among the individual ants.

For example, the limit of each ant’s patience with how much food in the colony should be depleted before working or how dirty their nest should be before cleaning varies depending on the ant.

In the first place, the question of why ants who were born of the same queen ant have such individual differences arises. The answer might have to be left to epigenetics, a discipline that deals with phenomena in which genes are controlled a posteriori.

In addition, the question of how each ant can know what the risk to the entire colony is also arises. The ability to infer system-wide information from partial information is connected to an idea of statistical science called Bayesian inference, and a simple mechanism that performs processing similar to this may be effectively built into the brains of ants.

I think that if such a problem is solved and mathematical models of the activities of ants are completed, these models can be applied to problem solving in human society.

We can learn a lot from the activities of ants. One example is a mechanism of society in which individuals’ characters, that is, diversity, is utilized to operate various tasks more efficiently.

Moreover, even if some sort of trouble occurs in one section, lazy workers in that task, that is, a standby group or those who are usually engaged in other tasks, immediately compensate for the trouble, so that the mechanism of a stable ant society in which the entire society is not affected by the trouble is fully durable and stable. This is now gathering attention as a system to be built into human society.

Now, Japan is striving for Society 5.0 as a form of near-future society. I think that for this purpose, a method should be employed in which accumulated big data is controlled in a centralized manner by a supercomputer such as Fugaku, and ICT and IoT are used to make each machine and function operate efficiently.

On the other hand, if we can find out more about the mechanism, just like the ant society, in which burdens of various tasks are smoothly dispersed and processed through the gathering of individuals that work autonomously, we may be able to make a smooth and efficient operation of an entire society possible by merely allowing each apparatus to have a simple function or information processing ability.

As a result, the future society may be realized earlier without a large-scale infrastructure development.

We can also learn how to live our lives from ants.

For example, keeping pace toward one goal has been considered as one of the characteristics of the Japanese people, and this characteristic was utilized during periods such as the high economic growth period.

However, in a society in which the population is decreasing, and rather stable growth and enrichment and happiness of individuals are pursued, isn’t it rather inefficient if everyone gets started at once in the same manner?

This would mean a society in which the right people work in the right places, rest after work, lend a hand when a problem occurs so as to cover each other’s weaknesses, and thus overall stability and efficiency can be maintained.

If each person can act like this by self-determination in society, this may be ideal. We can take a hint from Mr. and Mrs. Ant – to give them honorific titles.

* The information contained herein is current as of January 2021.
* The contents of articles on Meiji.net are based on the personal ideas and opinions of the author and do not indicate the official opinion of Meiji University.
* I work to achieve SDGs related to the educational and research themes that I am currently engaged in.