Pyramid Ant
Species
Macken Murphy
4.8 • 606 Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2018
⏱️ 14 minutes
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Summary
Dorymyrmex bicolor. This species of ant picks up rocks, and drops them on their enemies. Is it war? Define war. Is it tool use? Yes... And what does that say about tool use? What can ants teach us about ourselves?
Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q2kwz6bnI7FqNP1b16qEG1ul_ocKEkrMg8nKm9uqlYI/edit?usp=sharing
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Define war. |
| 0:03.0 | Take a second. Think of a definition that works for you. It's a simple word, we all know what it means, but it's harder to define than you'd think. |
| 0:11.0 | I want to say that war is something only humans do. |
| 0:15.0 | But when I actually try to define it, I put myself in a position that forces me to include the actions of other species |
| 0:23.3 | as war. Let's try out some definitions and see how they work. I'll start broad and add what I think |
| 0:30.4 | are agreeable caveats and see where we go. If we define war as just violent conflict, it's simple, but we end up including nonsense, like a single spontaneous fist fight or a wrestling match between dogs, those things are obviously not war. |
| 0:47.6 | So a broad definition like that is bad. |
| 0:50.9 | So let's narrow it. |
| 0:51.8 | Let's say violent conflict between groups. Okay? That's better. But what about a |
| 0:57.8 | bar fight between two different groups? That's not war. Let's narrow it again. Let's say ongoing |
| 1:04.8 | violent conflict between groups. That's a lot better. That excludes a lot of lame stuff and includes everything we |
| 1:14.7 | would want to include in our definition of war. Sure, there are a few extra awkward inclusions. |
| 1:21.0 | Westside story would be a war musical. Uh-huh. That's fine. But notably, chimpanzees would still wage war under this definition. |
| 1:30.3 | Seriously, we have records of quote-unquote wars lasting years between chimpanzee groups, |
| 1:38.0 | violent, ongoing conflicts between groups. |
| 1:41.4 | The chimpanzee wars, they're tricky to exclude. |
| 1:47.1 | Even if you say it has to be over territory or resources, you still end up including chimpanzee wars, which are almost always over those two |
| 1:53.8 | things. If you added territorial motivation to your definition, you would actually end up including |
| 2:00.0 | chimp wars and excluding definite wars of ideas, |
| 2:03.5 | like the Crusades or the War on Terror. Sure, you can use more human-specific words in your |
| 2:10.9 | definition intentionally, like it has to be between nation, states, or political groups. But define nation, |
| 2:18.7 | define state, define political group. These are just more abstract ideas that make our definition even harder. And what |
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