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
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
Steven Poole, writing for the Guardian on Saturday March 15, reviews "Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration", by Keith Sawyer and concludes that the book's big idea is that there is no such thing as the lone genius: everything turns out to be collaborative.
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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.