Becoming a Superorganism

His tiny mouth parts barely pierce the skin, but it's enough to inject formic acid, and get my attention. The lemony chemical pheromones his brethren have emitted alert me to their presence even before I feel the bite.

My hand reflexively swipes at the pain in my neck. Hot, soapy water engulfs his tiny body and another valiant warrior is lost in the Great Kitchen War.

The mountain of dishes that signaled the latest attack is reduced to a stack of dripping, drying cookware. The feast decimated. The sugar ants, on the retreat, but also on the defensive.

I imagine what confidence they must carry in their collective body. These nearly microscopic invertebrates calculate the battlefield and decide to deploy warriors to warn me off or take me down, rather than give up the loot.

My body mass is equivalant to roughly 70 million sugar ant warriors. The largest sugar ant colonies are around 300,000 individuals. There is absolutely no chance that we are well matched, and that does not deter this fierce little lemony member of the formicidae family. Formicidae for formic acid? Or for formidable?

I think of that common meme about the power of the people if we could "just get organized."

What gives the ants so much confidence in their collective power? So much attunement to one another? Ants build bridges and rafts out of their bodies to move the colony over obstacles or water. They attack and dismembers much larger animals (mice, baby birds, lizards, and other insects). They are a stealth weapon, underestimated by their prey, well organized, efficient, and completely harmonized with the rest of the colony via body movement and pheromones.

Do they give up their individuality? Is there only consciousness part of the collective? Or are they aware of their own unique experience within the colony?

Like bees, schools of fish, Aspen forests, fungal networks and more, ants are called a "superorganism," and exhibit a trait called "emergent intelligence." They can work together to solve complex problems by sharing perspectives and ideas in real time through touch, movement and pheremone release. We have seen colonies of fungus do the same thing in laboratory studies. There is an alignment that happens within these superorganisms that allow instantaneous communication and decision making that emerges from individuals and serves the collective.

We humans are newcomers on the planet. Ants have been here for about 168 million years. One Aspen Grove, named "Pando" in Utah is estimated to be about 80,000 years old. Humans in our modern form have only been on the scene about 200,000 years, roughly three lifetimes of the Aspen Grove Pando. Fungal networks are about 500 million years old.

It makes me wonder if this "superorganism" capacity is an emergent property of evolution on Earth. Species that make the cut learn to coordinate through intricate and instanteous means of communication to allow for rapid decision making that includes hundreds, thousands, or millions of data sets from coordinating individuals. It also makes me wonder if homo sapiens are building technology to fulfill that function, rather than using the tools that other species have mastered. And if the tools we are developing (AI, internet functionalities with satellites and cables buried under the ocean) will be competetive with pheromones and cascading carbohodyrate exchanges and physically interwoven communication structures. And if we will have the wisdom and the will to bend our emergent intelligence toward protecting life, or if we will just keep funneling the substrates of survival towards a few individuals who keep us captive in their webs of technology.

Ants do this, too, you know. Ants farm aphids every summer on my milkweed plants. The aphids secrete a delicious honeydew that the ants harvest while protecting the aphids from other predators. Maybe the billionaire class is trying to become the ants, and we (and the rest of life on Earth) are the aphids? I wonder if Gaia will tolerate that much supremacy? That pinnacle of an apex species on the planet? I don't know, but the track record for that level of control and domination has not shown her to see unchecked dominion in a favorable light. Gaia seems to prefer balance, and space for diversity to flourish. Only time will tell.

For now, I'm back to counter defense (literally) against the superorganism that has deployed its best foragers and warriors to loot the booty of my messy kitchen.....