Ant communications: experience them through a simulator
Ant communications are very different from the communications we typically experience in our organizational teams. In fact they are so different that to really understand them you have to try and find some way to experience them. Here is one way!
Ants predominantly use Pheromones (chemical signals) to communicate – for more on this see The perfect mobile messaging system: pheromone signals.
A tool for helping us experience an ants-eye view of team communications is a neat little simulation game from forgefx, a San Francisco-based interactive 3D simulation and visualization company, which allows us to run a simulation of the actions and interactions of two adjacent ant colonies.
I suggest you run through the simulation three times and note the main differences between ant communications and our normal team or group communications.
The first time run through without intervening.
The second time drastically increase the number of ants in one of the two colonies.
The third time move the rocks between the ants and their food sources and see what happens.
Now compare your notes with the first 6 principles of the bioteams manifesto.
Any surprises? Drop me a comment!
To activate the simulation click here
Tags: ants, simulators
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Bioteams Books Reviews
The coming shape of organizations and teams
Belbin sees Bioteams as the next step. Dr R Meredith Belbin, regarded as the father of "team-role" theory and one of the worlds foremost experts on teams predicts that we will evolve into bioteam forms. In his book "The Coming Shape of Organisation" Belbin picks out five observations human teams need to learn from "a diminutive masterclass" of social insects such as bees, ants and termites.
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Hi
I got many new data from your site but I am interested to know is there any musical communication between ants?
Thanks in advance for your attention
I once saw a group of Carpenter ants playing a concert. The guitars were acoustic. It seemed to be a free concert open to all ants. Various other insects were enjoying it from a safe distance. I videotaped it, but the musical sound and ant singing didn't pick up on my old camcorder mic.