A thought - provoking quote about an experiment with pitch-black pismire and cerise ant in a jounce has been disseminate online for years It report how when left alone , the emmet coexist peacefully But when the jar is shake violently , the ants ferment on each other , believe those of a unlike colouring are the foeman .
This analogy about ants is then relate to order – how various groups may clash due to external manipulation rather than innate enmity . On the surface it seems plausible . But is the account about the combat ant in reality true ? Or is it an manufacture tale to illustrate a point ?
Breaking Down the Viral Ant Analogy
The quotation in question pop off something like this :
“ If you put 100 black ants and 100 red emmet in a jar , nothing will happen . But if you violently shake the jar and leave it on the table , the ants will start killing each other . The red ant think the black ant are the foe , and vice versa , when the actual enemy is the mortal who shook the shock . ”
It then sop up analog to societal naval division – men vs charwoman , vernal vs sometime , disastrous vs white , etc . The message is that we should n’t oppose amongst each other , but instead postulate who is manipulate thing behind the scenes .
Possible Origins from Literature
This ant taradiddle does not seem to originate from any real scientific study . The other mentions online come from around 2020 , where the source is number as “ unidentified ” or “ anon. . ”
Some think it may have been prompt by a transit in Kurt Vonnegut ’s 1963 novelCat ’s place of origin :
“ I ca n’t remember what all Frank had fighting in the shock that solar day , but I can remember other bug fights we staged later on : one hart overhang against a hundred cherry pismire , one centipede against three spiders , scarlet ants against contraband ants . They wo n’t fight unless you keep sway the jar . And that ’s what Frank was doing , shaking , shake the jounce . ”
This fancied scene of a child shake up up a jar of battling bugs closely mirrors the viral ant story .
Misattributed to Famous Naturalist
More recently , the citation has been misattributed to renowned nature documentarian Sir David Attenborough . However , there is no record of him ever saying this .
Attenborough has spoken extensively about ant in his decades of work . But this specific allegory about red and black ants does not seem to come from him .
Misrepresenting a citation from lit or an anon. on-line post as coming from a famous soma like Attenborough give it an air of legitimacy . However , the ants in the jar analogy remain fictional .
Ant Behavior in Reality
While the violent encounter between shaken scarlet and disgraceful ants makes a compelling metaphor , substantial ant behavior is more nuanced . Here are some facts about how ants interact :
ant often obviate struggle using pheromone trails and scent markings on territory boundaries .
war between dissimilar ant colonies do take place , but are not that common .
Intraspecies aggression is hooked on multiple factors like nest proximity , food for thought supply , and generative position .
emmet can recognize and accept settlement member through shared epidermal hydrocarbon that give each colony a clear-cut “ scent ID . ”
Foreign ants that lack the proper scent cues are often rejected or assail , while accepted ants are tolerated .
Different species may fight over territory and resource or quarry on each other . But they do n’t mechanically attack every emmet that looks different .
While ants can certainly be aggressive , the realism of ant interactions is more complex than just attacking anything that has a different color , as the viral quote imply .
An Appeal to Shared Humanity
Even if the original story is fabricated , the core message can still resonate . By draw parallels between the scrap pismire and human societal divides , it highlights how outside sources often exacerbate conflict unnecessarily .
The doctrine of analogy take exception people to think about who or what is “ shaking the jar ” – be it politicians accent divisions , media exit sensationalizing report , alien entities sowing strife , or potbelly profiting off segmentation .
And it ask us to consider how to pooh-pooh the narrative of other radical being adversary . identify shared struggles and common mankind can be more constructive than demonizing perceived opponent .
So while the battling bugs may not chew over literal ant behavior , the call for empathy rather than enmity contains some wisdom to reflect on . Even fiction , it seems , can illuminate truth at times .
The viral story of reddish and fatal pismire peacefully coexisting until outside shaking forces them to fight looks like devise , not scientific fact . But the desire for people to give up viewing those unlike themselves as enemies is one deserving strain for , irrespective of the authenticity of some thought - provoking ants in a shock .
