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well, i think that ants have what i call "Officers". many people claim that all ants know what their doing and that they all run from the queen... but, i killed a quite a few a few hours ago and noticed that they are still mindlessly running in circles. i think i killed all their officers, because usually when ya attack ants, they run off. the officers are the ones you see running back and forth between others, giving and receiving orders. i think i killed the officers because the ant are just mindlessy running circles, and the officers are not there to direct them and do what an overlord does for other zerg units. well..... give me some info if im wrong, but from basic household observations.... the ants have officers who command small groups.

It is a constant debate as to whether or not ants do truly receive their orders directly from the queen. Some researches believe that there is some form of communication between the queen and the workers in which we cannot detect yet. Their ideas suggest that the queen is the only ant in the colony that actually does any thinking, and somehow controls all of the others remotely. I personally don't agree with this, it seems a little farfetched.

To address your observations, there are several reasons why this could happen. Firstly, if the ants were "winged" (male ants in this case), and it was mating season, they may be running around as the final stage of the mating action (after mating, male ants run around until they die). That is very unlikely, however. More than likely, it is because you frightened the worker ants. Since ants are blind, they have some trouble finding their way around in unknown areas (even with their accute sense of smell). There are no "officer ants", as such. There are "guard ants" (soldier ants on watch duty), however. These ants usually stay at the entrance to the nest, and do not leave. This would make it highly unlikely that you killed these ones (from what I understand, you were not right beside their nest). Ants usually communicate to each other, but they are all on the same level of power in their system. Thus, their system is more of a team effort as opposed to an army run by captains.

I hope that this clears up some of your misconceptions

The mass communications between ants has been pretty much discovered.They are pheremones, and they basically have two signals, one which signals food, and one that signals danger. Under a normal setting ants will basically wander in spiraling directions (almost random, but if you study the nest for long periods of time they have weird patterns) until they find a food source. They then secrete a path of pheremones leading other ants to the source. The food pheremone is stationary, they might insert the signal into the ground or something, but it doesn't move. The other ants follow if so directly that if something gets on the path they scatter until they find it again. (ever see a bugs life, the leaf part, but they don't rely on other ants to help them go around) The danger signal, on the other hand, travels along with the flow of air, effectivly signalling many ants, which may (or may not) release more pheremone. This is why the scatter.

I have never heard of ants having officers, so I'm not sure if they do or not. They can communicate by mingling antennae, but I dought there is a heirarchy. Termites on the other hand I could see having some sort of leading group, because they have many more specialized members of the society.

I think Rantent pretty much summed it up.

I love ants - and I actually think that they're fascinating creatures. There's a big nest of them in the paving around the small pond in our front garden (this pond is a really amazing ecosystem - plants, frogs, newts, snails, fish, ants, rock mites and more). I knocked a few into the pond once and the fish ate them.

The idea of a kind of hive mind is certainly very interesting, but I do believe that much of an ant's behaviour is determined by the pheromones it detects and secretes. I used to play SimAnt a lot.

OH yea! Me too! I remember how cheap the food looked though. Although in Sim Ant there really WAS an officer, the player. o.o..

ants are really well.. interesting... and is there any sim ant games? i play them on starcraft all the time.

I've heard the pheremone explainaton and the queen explaination before. Yes, ants are very fun to watch. I had a little game once with a basketball and an ant a few years ago. Whenver it turns, place the basketball in front of it, but do not crush it. The game ended when I got bored and crushed it.

At school, there tends to be lots of ants in the cooking class kitchens.
And everyone always starts yelling about how they should die.
Personally, I don't think there's one queen that controls all of them completely. That would require an absurd multi-tasking ability. Imagine having 40 arms and heads. Now imagine kicking the 40 best SC player's asses at the same time.
Just a guess, but I'd think that that wouldn't be too far off.

People are annoying... hate arachnids and insects... freak out about ants, spiders, and bees, even though they're all cool... idiots thinking that a bee is more likely to attack some odd, soft lump that's just sitting there then an odd, soft lump that's attacking it...

The queen theory sounds like the buggers in 'Enders Game'. Kill the queen, disable the workers.

Yeah - what would happen if you 'assassinated' the queen?

I don't know much about ants, but my guess would be that although the ants would be a confused, they'd carry on relatively normally.

I heard a while back that one of the maters become queen.
It's probable true since female maters become queen anyways.

I forget where is heard this/saw this but reguler worker ants have basic instincts that they follow. If there is no nest then the workers while automaticly start building one/digging. If there is no food the workers will go and get food. And they said if you have a glass jar, you can actually capture maybe 20 worker ants and they will live by themselfs in that jar, wih out a queen, until their live cycle is over. And they said is you want to start your own colony in a jar or something you will have to capture a queen and this is possible by wiating for the right season for when a new queen is born in the hive and travels to find a new home. I think this is all true, I forget where I saw this all.

I also remember watching Wild Discovery a LONG TIME AGO, and this aggressive type of ant colony actually attacked a termite colony, the battle was pretty cool to watch as you see some ants and termits getting cut in two by warrier classes. The ants needed food so after the battle (the ants won) the ants carried off ALL of the dead back to the ant hill for food. It was pretty cool when I watched it but I wish I could remember when I saw it.

Ants can't have instincts.

With a queen, dirt, and an endless supply of sugar. You cannot have ants living without a queen.
1. No offspring
2. No control
3. No control = can't eat
The thing you watched was probably on the internet or something.

All ants are aggressive, that is why they have a special class built for fighting.

Ants have no basic instincts? I looked around on several sites about ants (mostly about having an ant farm/running an ant colony) and they said you could have an ant colony without a queen, but it would only last a month or two. This seems to imply that worker ants can survive without a queen, but the colony won't survive due to the workers' limited lifespan.

Yea that what I was trying to say, but couldn't find the correct wording and not all ants are aggressive. I said the agressive type of ant! You know bullet ants? fire ants? I am talking about them.

I think Starcraft has just altered your imagination.

They probably already knew the direction to the food from pheremones that are left on the ground when food is found.

All are agrresive except leaf-cutter ants.

About the termites, termites and ants are natural enemies so when ants attack a termite colony, they leave nothing.

This whole topic is about ant control...
As far as I know, humans don't know for sure how important the queen is(beyond offspring, that is).

Or 'Antz' for that matter.

ohhh I have a correction on my part. Bullet ants are not naturally aggressive. Only if you disturb their territory or nest will they come out and eat you haha. Bullet ants are tough mo fo's Im telling you, if you get swarmed, your dead. Their bite feels like a bullet (supposidly). Fire ants on the other hand are little biotches! Some times you can't tell what a fire ant is and whats not becuase they come in different sizes and sometimes look like other ants. I was stung one time by a fire ant and MAN it hurt, well at least it burned for a while hahaha.

Chris, you forgot army ants, they are pretty nasty I hear. Here is some info I found on a website.

Ants do not take orders from the "Queen". The queen ant is simply there for reproduction only. I find ants to be smarter than human beings, simply because they can perfectly run a colony without a leader. They can switch jobs faster, get work done faster, etc. When a disaster happens, only specific ants will repair the damage, and you will never find more ants than needed to repair the damage. Other ants will simply just ignore the disaster unless it relates to their route. Ants start a colony with minor workers(smaller than the regular ant of the species), and eventually move up to major workers(larger than the regular size ant of the species), and even produce other queens to leave and create new colonies. Ants consider any organism that doesn't "smell like them" a threat, including other ants and even ants from the same species.

At least that's what I understand...

Cool, army ants look like they would hurt if you got bitten or stung! Scientists also say they have some intelligence too! http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf066/sf066b07.htm