Of slavery in human society ants and the defense against it

"Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature - opposition to it, is his love of justice.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                 -Abraham Lincoln

If you had thought slavery is a concept only in humans, you are mistaken. Slavery is seen even in ants!*

Before you find out more about the ant slavery, you need to know the social structure of any ant colony. Generally, each colony has a Queen which is the sole reproductive individual of the colony. There can be multiple queens in a colony too. There is a division of labour in the colony. That means, work is divided between many individuals: soldiers protect the colony, foragers search for food, maiden workers clean their nest, nurse brood and the queen and so on.

Coming to slavery—some species of ants are known to invade colonies of closely related ant species (host species) and steal their brood. Once the brood matures to become workers, they work as slaves in the slave maker colony. The slaves forage for food, maintain the nest and are involved even in slave making raids on other ant colonies. Some species of slave makers have gone to the extent that they have lost the ability to forage and thus are completely dependent on slaves¹.  

The process of slave making begins with a few scout ants checking out the potential slave colonies. It is followed by a raid in which many slave maker ants involve in a fierce fight with the potential slaves. Many ants from both the colonies get killed in the process. By the end of it, if the slave makers succeed, they steal the brood and carry them to their nest.

Photo: Alex Wild

Slave maker=red ant, Host=black ant

At this point, you might be wondering—‘Don’t the host species remember that the slave maker scouting is followed by the raids and thus prepare to defend more fiercely? ’

Yes, they do. In a paper published in the journal Behavioral Ecology, Pamminger and others tested if there is any increase in host ants’ aggression as an induced defense (after a scouting event) against slave makers. They also checked if the host ants’ response to non-nestmate conspecifics/slaves is context dependent.

Optional reading--[To answer the above questions, they used 3 treatment groups and a control group consisting different combinations of dead slave maker ants and conspecific ants. They stimulated scouting events by 4 consecutive cycles of encounters. First cycle consisted of conspecifics in all groups. Second cycle had slave makers in treatment 1 and 2 while treatment 3 had species of same genus that of the host. In third cycle treatment 2 had slave maker while all other groups had conspecifics. Fourth cycle had all conspecifics except in treatment 3 in which no ant was presented. Control group had conspecific dead ants.  They noted the responses of host ants for each of the 4 cycles of encounters in the 3 different treatments.]

It is revealed that host ants remember the slave makers and show an increased aggression for at least 3 days. After an encounter, host ants react equally aggressively to slave makers and non-nest mate conspecific/slaves. So the response to conspecifics is context dependent--higher after a slave maker encounter than in normal encounter with the conspecifics. Host ants also show a seasonal variation in response to the conspecifics (higher aggression in summer as there are few slave raids during this time). The response to slave makers is always high. All this makes sense knowing that, while conspecifics are competitors for resources, slave makers are a threat to the survival of the colony.

In a broad picture of animal behavior, this study adds a pixel of environment dependent behavior response. It showed that, in an animal, different behavioral changes are induced by competitors/predators/slave makers in different conditions.

Throughout the study, dead conspecifics and slave makers were used. This would mean that the behavior of these individuals during the slave raid and the corresponding responses of host ants were completely ignored. So, the findings need to be validated with experiments using live ants.  Costs and benefits of the induced responses need to be quantified.

*Note: Even though the term ‘slavery’ is anthropomorphized, one should not think of considering slavery as normal (i.e. nature chose such a concept— so it’s okay to support it). One should not base morals strictly based on what is seen in nature.

References:

1.        ‘The Ants’ by E O Wilson and Bert Holldobler

2.   Pamminger et al, “Increased host aggression as an induced defense against slave-making ants”,Behavioral Ecology, 2011

3.     http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/social-parasitism-in-ants-13256421

What's cooking offline?

‘I wonder what’s cooking online. What are my friends upto? Has somebody shared something interesting? Who is getting how many likes?’ These are a few thoughts which fly across some students who are  into Facebook.

I am not writing this to crib about Facebook, but to share my experience of volunteering for Disha, a student organization.  Disha conducts ‘Spread the smile’, an outreach program for kids in villages near Pune. It aims to motivate kids to learn - the fun way. It is through simple experiments and games they are taught the concepts which they felt familiar only in the cramped lines of textbooks.

You must be wondering, why I wrote about Facebook in the beginning. Volunteering for Spread the smile was an exit into the reality: away from the Pseudo-walls of Facebook, the pages of books, the sluggish weekends and from the virtual reality.

I had a few wonderful experiences in Ambavne, the village we visited. We started with teaching kids—how to make their own hand pump. We asked them how and why it worked the way it did. Other activities included making a motor, paper cup telephone etc. 

“The Science labs are just for name-sake show off. It is all blanketed with dust” said a student pointing at a room which is supposedly a Science lab.

A few kids seemed to be very interested in all the activities. Here are a few photos:

As the Sun’s heat plummeted, traditional chulhas smoked dried wood, leaving kitchen in smoke clouds. Meanwhile, the village elders were involved in their usual chat near Panchayat building. As stars shone one by one in the sky, the kids started showing up one by one near Primary school building. Surprisingly, a few (more than expected) elders also assembled. It was show time for kapil, a volunteer who carried his telescope to show kids, the vast ocean of secrets and awe right above us—the night sky. It was a star gazing session. Kids were very energetic and often over enthusiastic: a guy almost pushed the telescope down.

With this, we retired for the day. We woke up to the birds chirping. After completing our morning ablutions, we stepped out to know the village—its social structure, places, people, traditions etc. We were escorted by the village Sarpanch, who had been very supportive since the beginning.

As we walked through a few lanes, we could not miss to notice women mopping their houses, young girls creating traditional rice flour designs on dung paste spread in front of their houses. Hens which were just let out of an inverted handmade basket ran around leaving their footprints on the designs. Perfume of incense rented air. It was a pleasant start for the day.

“People of different castes doing different jobs live in separate groups in this village” said Sarpanch, pointing at a potter’s house.

Chulhas, pots and idols of Lord Ganesh which smelled of fresh clay could be seen outside the house. As we approached, the potter showed us how they make idols.

We then moved on to the other side of the village where child labour was prevalent in a brick kiln.

“Don’t click photos. You will complain that we are making our kids work” said a worker, when I was clicking photos of the kids working.

I had no idea what I could do for the kids. I am sure we have written and read about problems like this for exams, blogs etc. But, what could I have done? If they send the kids to school, they will have less money to feed them. If they don’t, the kids will be illiterate. It is a sad tradeoff.

“There are many big problems which we may not be able to solve. Problems like child labour are complicated. We should try solving small problems first” suggests a volunteer back in Disha meeting held at IISER.

“So..uh…what did you learn from this program?” I asked my co-volunteers.

“The way my brother grows up in Pune city is completely different from the way these kids do…” said Sofiya.

 Ambarish, Kapil and Mihir (volunteers) also shared what they felt about the program. It was a unique experience for all of us.

It definitely changed a few things in my life. Lately, I wonder—what’s cooking offline, in the real life.

PS: I urge you to try volunteering for Disha. I am sure there is lot to teach     and even more to learn. Your weekend would be worth spending, doing something useful. For more info, visit Disha’s blog.

Of monkey business and life lessons

“Yatrigan Kripaya dhyan de. Gaadi no 11212, Pune se Mumbai jaanevaali Deccan Queen, platform no 1 se ravaana hone vaali hein” warned a pre-recorded female voice which echoed in the misty but otherwise mostly empty Shivaji Nagar Railway Station.

“Hurry up! Let’s get the tickets” exclaimed Sangam. Nisarg scurried to the counter. We were on a weekend trek to Bhimashankar.

As the train moved slowly, Anil, Nisarg, Sangam and I barely managed to get into a general compartment. It was packed with people, goats, hens and what not. It was very difficult to move. Luckily, being skinny, Nisarg and I managed to move through the crowd towards a window. As the train swerved out of Pune, the tender rays of the Sun kissed the skin of the people near windows. It was a perfect sunrise in the back drop of hills - much like a kid’s first scenery drawing.

The train snaked across the hills of Western Ghats through a few tunnels on the way. One could see kids waving at the passengers in every village the train passed through. They seemed to enjoy both the sight and the sound of train. It was a delight to beholder’s eyes. For those kids, even an old cycle tire is a prized possession.  These sights bore testimony to the ultimate fun and bliss of enjoying even the simple things in life.

As we grow, we get caught up in the quagmire of monotonous jobs. Obviously, I am not asking you to wave at the passengers in trains. I mean, are we digging the wrong places for fun and happiness? We no longer seem to enjoy the so called ‘simple things’. Is that what makes us grown-ups?

Meanwhile, we reached Karjat. From there, we took an auto to Khandas, a village in the base of Bhimashankar hill. By the time we began trudging up the Bhimashankar hill, the Sun looked like an egg yolk on a frying pan. As we continued our trek, we saw a few Macaque monkeys along a cliff on the way. As they seemed quiet and unmindful of our presence, we clicked a few photos.

   

Suddenly as if after a meticulous planning, the whole group of monkeys attacked us. Sangam and I ran pell-mell while Anil and Nisarg were trying to find a way to escape. A monkey jumped on Nisarg’s bag and scattered its contents. Sangam was a little paranoid and was shouting at me to stop running. He was mad at me for leaving them. Nisarg had lost his rain coat, gifted by his father, in the commotion.

Somehow, all the four of us managed to meet near a tree. The Alpha male showing off its extra sharp canines inched towards us. Surrounded by monkeys in three directions and a steep cliff in the other, we were rendered helpless. We could neither run nor fight. So we decided to open up all the bags and show them that there was nothing left. The Alpha male pulled all the stuff out of bags and sat with us for a minute probing a piece of soap. After some time, they lost interest in us and vanished into the canopy.

It resembled a rape scene of typical Indian movie—scattered clothes, bags, bottles… It was a life time experience for all of us: of getting surrounded by monkeys, sharing space and time with the scary Alpha male…

I am sure we have all read many stories of valour in our schools. Some of us even imagine ourselves as the protagonist of the story. Do we really have those characters in us? Can we imbibe them just by being enclosed in the four walls of a classroom? May be, if we had stayed together, Nisarg might not have lost his precious rain coat.  

I realise that treks are not just aimless trudging in the wilderness. They teach us life lessons. They reveal our inner selves, improve our learnability and make us mentally strong. Until we are confronted with unexpected situations, we don’t quite know what we can and what we can’t. It is in such situations, we learn that life is not linear. But, isn’t that the beauty of it?

So, Yatrigan Kripaya dhyan de! What makes Life worth it is the journey—the people we meet, places we see, things we learn or unlearn, the joy we find in the simple things… What say, readers? Hellooo!! Anybody there..? Was I that preachy? J

Feel free to share your views and stories.

PS: Sitting through a boring lecture was the driving force for writing this article. After all, anything can be turned useful. Why not a boring lecture?!

Photos: Nisarg P Desai

I write, can I?

Mind-- it was a dried up desert. No thoughts, no ideas-- and feelings? None at all!

He sighed into the cold air. All of a sudden his mind had homed vacuum. It was one of those writer’s block thing. He could neither sleep nor eat. The sensation of emotional word shower was suddenly numb. He stared at his laptop, as if he wanted to emotionally black mail the word document to seed some ideas in his mind.

 Of course, what could a word document do? It was a mere lump of clay waiting to be shaped.

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 The sound of silence lodged his heart. Everything around was as still as the printed words in the books. His mind felt emptiness even in the enigmatic expression of Mona Lisa in the portrait which hung wobbly on the shabby wall of his room.

He felt as if he was fighting a war against the words and they were too cowardly to come near him.

“Why? Whaai are the ideas afraid of me?  What do I write on for my next book?”

supernovacondensate.net

He started fantasizing himself as a frog in a swarm of word flies. He could see the flies but could not catch them right. He turned away from the laptop and had a fleeting glance of his reflection in a mirror nearby.

“Unfortunately, ideas don’t fly around in the air. But definitely, some thought, good or bad, does arise in my mind. Why don’t I write down whatever hits me and compile them as a piece?” he asked himself introspectively.

It was as if he saw ‘desert’ as ‘dessert’. He was more affirmative than ever. His dried up mind was replete with words, live words! His thoughts rolled down at will as if they were set free from a jail. The words sprinted along the page as his fingers danced on keyboard. He went on till he reached the saturation.

“Err……….err….Umm now what do I write?”

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The water fall - the word fall - had stopped rolling any more.

His eyes whooshed through the cramped columns of his writing, like a boy running in an alleyway of a slum city. The editor in him took over his mind. He started editing the piece.

“Oh!  I should delete, ‘and feelings? None at all! ’,in the first line. It does not sound logical. Emptiness is a feeling too! A full glass cannot be filled. Emptiness is a sign of seeking more…” he thought to himself. “I write, can I?”

                                                      A Letter to let her...

To

The letter

Post box

Date: today

Dear letter,

Everyone writes you. A few long for you to arrive. But, none writes to you!

I am glad to meet you in this postbox where messages meet and share the secrets, joy and gloom equally. It seems as if it is a carnival of emotions. Each letter has its own emotion to communicate: the excitement of the birth of first child, a young man’s romance in his Love Letter, a letter replete with the sadness of demise of a valiant soldier …

The reason, I write to you today, is to leave this letter with you. She is very innocent. She has not seen the real world out there. She feels lonely and abandoned since the e-mails have pervaded the world. She feels as if it is the end of her world…

I want you to let her communicate the way you do. Let her feel the emotions of writing, reading and most importantly, of being a letter!

Let her know that this post box homes both good news as well as the not so good ones. Letters convey myriad emotions-- acceptance, rejection; love, hate; joy, sadness…

Teach her how to relish when the postman thumps the seal on her. Let her dream about the gusto of getting her first stamp. Let her understand the absolute bliss of communicating through the letters.

Before the postman arrives, let her know what this life thing is anyways!

Let her…….let her…..for she is a letter!

Yours verbally,

The words of this letter

Photo credit: naturalparentingtips.com