Making a case for ant watchers

There is a fascinating parallel between ubiquitous ants and urban traffic. Other than numbers, peak traffic flow is symbolic of collective behavior of ants, as at a critical concentration it bifurcates into a new branch where not only it pushes others but gets pushed by others too. In dilute traffic flows, however, much like ants you follow your inclination.

Not without reason is the use of ‘ant’ algorithms a thriving industry in computer science, artificial intelligence and robotics. Ants’ collective intelligence is now being used to encourage research leading to the development of vehicles that can navigate using moment-to-moment responses to their own sensors, without any need for remote control.

In her encounters with ants, Deborah Gordon, Professor of Biology at the Stanford University, has revealed that irrespective of its size an ant colony operates without a central control or hierarchy, as no ant directs another. It is amazing that unlike the bees, the queen is not in charge as the colony itself acts as a ‘superorganism’. She argues that ant society offers the choice of a system for the human society to organize itself without any distinct hierarchy.

Deborah Gordon's Ant Encounters is stimulating, erasing misconceptions that the Hollywood movies like Antz seek to portray. These movies show the ant colony as a corporation with more or less disgruntled workers. In contrast, ant colonies are anything but a totalitarian society where individual ants decide what to do based on the rate, rhythm and pattern of individual encounters and interactions - resulting in a dynamic network that coordinates the functions of the colony.

Varying in colors from red to black and from blue to orange there are over 11,000 species of ants that have been identified. These social insects are reported to be 140 million years old, having survived the last extinction that accounted for the mighty dinosaurs. It is even suggested that the mass of ants may be ten times that of humans on the planet.

Given their sheer numbers, it is tragic that only 50 species of ants have thus far been studied in detail. Had the English, in the nineteenth century, extended their obsessions with birds and wildflowers a bit further to ants, there would have been local ant-watchers club! Gordon's work is of historical significance as she connects evolutionary biology with political theory in making a case that ant societies are model systems for the study of collective behavior....Link

Ant Encounters: Interaction Networks & Colony Behavior 
by Deborah Gordon
Princeton University Press, Oxford; 167 pages, $ 19.95

Malleable but not pliable

School days memory of a chapter on malleable and ductile metal that is of critical significance to the aviation sector resonates like a romantic story on the marvels of science. That excavation of aluminium from bauxite sends the mountain crumbling down is a horror story one begins to learn later. The recent scrapping of environmental clearance for bauxite mining from the tribal-rich Niyamgiri hills in Odisha has pieced together two stories into an unpalatable saga of corporate-led environmental destruction and cultural genocide.

In their penetrating anthropological study, Felix Padel and Samarendra Das uncover an epic clash of ideologies that pits profit mongering metal traders against the forest dwelling tribal communities in Odisha. Out of this Earth is a courageous and compelling account of this vital encounter. The authors reveal that behind the ripping of bauxite out of the mountains is an elaborate financial structure which links the mining corporations, government deals, international banks and the military-industrial complex.

Aluminium’s vital importance to the global military-industrial complex offers it the cushion against market uncertainties. No wonder, the alumina scrip did not take any beating at the stock market despite the recent ban on bauxite mining. An American military expert had long warned: ‘No fighting is possible, and no war can be carried to a successful conclusion today, without using vast quantities of aluminium. Aluminium, and great quantities of it, spell the difference between victory and defeat’.

The life-threatening features of the white metal have gained additional potency through hidden subsidies on water and electricity. Refining a metric ton of aluminium requires an average of 250 kilowatt hours of electricity and smelting it consumes an additional 1,300 kwh. Over 1,378 tons of water sucked into the process returns as 4-8 tons of toxic red mud and 13 tons of carbon dioxide. In simple terms, this means that the negative impact of producing aluminium is around 85 times its positive value.

Felix and Das trace the history, science and sociology of aluminium extraction in re-creating a ‘metal colonialism’ that threatens to wipe out the traditional habitations of adivasis in the mineral endowed tribal regions of the country. It takes courage to publish an intensely engaging book of immense scholarship that unmasks the political-economy of growing metal capitalism, at a time when mining and growth seem synonymous.

You can avoid reading this book at your own risk!....Link

Out of this Earth: East India Adivasis & the Aluminium Cartel 
by Felix Padel and Samarendra Das 
Orient BlackSwan, New Delhi 752 pages, Rs 895