Could ants evolve an organ that could make and process radio waves for wifi pheromones?
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Ask the guys at Wurlitzer?
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Radio waves are rather large so several ants might need to link together for long distance listening. Possibly ten ants.
Call it an "ant ten a"
@futurebird @bjc my first thought was that gigahertz interception would require large size majors, and so I guessed you would call them gigahertz interceptor ants, or giants, and make a giant major pun. But I suppose it's more appropriate for a eusocial organism to link up when connecting to a network.
I'll be here all night folks!
@futurebird I think the wavelength might be a challenge. It's a couple of inches even for 6 GHz ones, so ideally you'd want pretty big ants for efficient transmission and reception, I think. Or maybe some kind of ant array where they synchronise their phase differences or wire themselves together somehow.
On the other hand, nerve signals are pretty slow, so so the wavelength in that form ought to be tiny enough to fit inside an ant.
@timtfj @futurebird
AM radio reception requires no power and used a germanium crystal iirc.. ‘60s novelty ones were very small. They do need a coil of wire as an antenna.
@stevewfolds @futurebird I remember the (Sinclair?) matchbox radio. The transmission part is the bigger challenge, I reckon. Spiders might do better. They could construct proper aerials out of conductive silk once they'd evolved it.
Ants can make silk too, well when they are young, but adult ants aren't above using the youth like little glue guns when needed.
It probably needs to be a two-step process.
By analogy: Of course, you can find your significant other by posting something on the Fediverse, but then, you will need to apply genuine perfume on the last mile. Or, at the very least, some shower gel. 😂
@futurebird some mesh network path planning has been based on the way ants use chemical trails to route back to the colony, so this would be fitting.
i'm sure there's a joke in here, but it's too early in the morning for me to figure it out.
@futurebird
You were setting up the pun. But here I will tag @rr4idic , who has a story about hive mind aliens that do pretty much that: https://rznicolet.com/2026/04/19/building-a-benevolent-hive-mind/
Building a Benevolent Hive Mind