The World of Ants: A Science-Fiction Universe

by Rémy Chauvin

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0809098105
• ISBN13: 9780809098101
• Release Date: January 1971
• Publisher: Hill and Wang
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Charming, readable and full of interesting detail

This book is out of print and so you'll have to find a used copy. For entomologists, amateur or otherwise, and especially for myrmecologists of all stripes, the effort will be rewarded. Written in French and first published in Paris in 1969 and then in English the following year with a clear and readable translation by George Ordish, Remy Chauvin's book is a celebration of myrmecology--the study of ants. It is a curious book. There is no bibliography. The index refers to the great myrmecologists--August H. Forel, William M. Wheeler, Edward O. Wilson and others--simply by their last name! The focus is on the red ants of France and Germany which Chavin studied outside his home for many years; but there is also a wealth of information about other kinds of ants from studies by other scientists. The strength of the book is in the interesting details that Chauvin gives, especially about how he conducted his field research, and in his enthusiastic style. Of course, since the book is almost forty years old, there is a lot that Chauvin didn't know. I suspect that today's professionals may find some of the book a bit quaint! I was particularly interested in how Chauvin accounted for the preceived intelligence of ants. He was writing before the term "swarm intelligence" had been coined, yet his take comes very close to anticipating the contemporary understanding. Here's an example of what I mean. Chauvin is explaining how ants "realize" the size of a discovered food source. He writes, "At first sight one might think ants pass on information...as do bees. In fact, after the ants put down their dotted line of odour, it evaporates in the course of a few mintues. If the food is not of much size, and if but few ants go to it, then only a short time will elapse before the substance evaporates and the trail is no longer marked. On the other hand, if the food is swarming with ants, new arrivals cannot get to it and they return to the nest without marking the track; thus the number of ants at the source depends on its size, without any exchange of information from ant to ant being necessary." (p. 151) A very fine example of how swarm intelligence works! Another example is contained in the meaning of the word "stigmergy" (from Pierre-Paul Grasse's work with termites) which Chauvin defines as "The work that stimulates the worker." The idea is to account for the fact that social insects can construct elaborate structures without any idea of what they are doing and without a plan. The gist of it is this (as Chauvin explains on pages 40 to 44): a worker may place "little pellets of building material here and there..." And then "it may happen that a worker puts its pellet not at the side of one already in postion but on top of it... The workers' behavior then slowly changes. They tend to take more interest in this embryo building..." And eventually columns grow upwards and join. Chauvin concludes, "A small number of automatic reactions combined t