Australian Scientists Use 'Age of Empires' To Simulate Ant Warfare (abc.net.au) 11
Slashdot reader TranquilVoid writes: To better understand the battles between native and invasive ants, scientists at Australia's national science agency have turned to Microsoft's classic computer game to model ant warfare.
Across Australia, 50 different species of invasive ants have established themselves, including electric ants, fire ants and yellow crazy ants, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent attempting to eradicate them.
"Ants are one of the few groups of animal species in which warfare resembles human warfare, in terms of scale and mortality," researcher Samuel Lymbery said. The research found small armies of strong soldiers did better in complex terrain-based battlefields and large armies of weaker soldiers fared better in simple open battlefields. In the ant world, a simple battlefield would be a footpath or park while a complex battlefield would be bushland with undergrowth and woody debris.
Dr Lymbery said his work could help develop new approaches to habitat management, like adding undergrowth or more environmental complexity back into urbanised environments, to tip the competitive balance back in favour of native ants.
Across Australia, 50 different species of invasive ants have established themselves, including electric ants, fire ants and yellow crazy ants, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent attempting to eradicate them.
"Ants are one of the few groups of animal species in which warfare resembles human warfare, in terms of scale and mortality," researcher Samuel Lymbery said. The research found small armies of strong soldiers did better in complex terrain-based battlefields and large armies of weaker soldiers fared better in simple open battlefields. In the ant world, a simple battlefield would be a footpath or park while a complex battlefield would be bushland with undergrowth and woody debris.
Dr Lymbery said his work could help develop new approaches to habitat management, like adding undergrowth or more environmental complexity back into urbanised environments, to tip the competitive balance back in favour of native ants.
Whatâ(TM)s the end game here? (Score:2)
Will they use computer simulations to train indigenous ant species to defeat the invaders? Perhaps even ant VR?
I remember playing Age of Empires... (Score:1)
Sounds like (Score:3)
Sounds like someone had to justify his game playing and using grant money.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. In the middle of the night we netadmins would schedule stress tests. Half-life.
Re: (Score:2)
The toughest part (Score:3)
Was teaching the ants to say "rogan."
Been there (Score:2)
Done that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Comment from an original Age of Kings developer (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm am one of the original programmers from Ensemble Studios.
I've heard of the game being used for something like a few times over the years.
If I recall correctly, back in the day (around 1999-2002) we received a few requests for a customized version of Age of Kings to support whatever it was they were doing - be it adding extra data output (like a log file detailing every combat step), fixing the random number seeds so slightly different scenario could have the exact same random number sequence used or some additional feature to the scenario editor.
I think (and again my memory is hazy on this so I could be wrong) we actually did produce one, and maybe a second, custom build of the game for use in an academic / research setting.
Umm, we already have that (Score:2)