h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

An ant colony sends out thousands of scouts a day looking for possible food sources. Some of these ants have no, or very little luck finding food. SOME of them, however, are very lucky (or very clever) and stumble upon (or track down) a veritable mother-lode of goodies for the colony to retrieve and eat.
My question is, do these lucky (or clever) ants get any kind of recognition, promotion, holiday, pay rise, increase in rations, public feting or celebration that, quite rightly, they may feel they deserve?
Conversly, do the slack, lazy or even just plain unlucky ants, no-hopers who are just bludging off these system - cop any punishment?

The lucky ants get no recognition. They do get to eat, though. The unlucky ones which wander in the wrong direction end up eating less food and as a result eventually dying.

Can you use the term "bludging off these system" when a colony is all family?

Even in a family, you can have slackers, people who don't do their share of the work. But in an ant colony, everybody works, because that's what they're programmed to do.

Ants are BORG Only the queen has motivation

And apparently there are only 1,000 neurons in an ant's brain.

So an ant has just enough brain power to vote

Invariably more than the person they're electing, then.

Of course ants get promotion:

1) Worker ant (Self-important)
2) Soldier ant (Adamant)
3) Superintendant
4) Lieutenant
5) Queen Ant (Half-Germant)
6) Saddant Hussein
7) MS Ant(TM) 2002 - the new industry standant

Well, it's 1am - don't blame me for not being more imaginative.

B

Going by the sketchy details that I remember, there is a theory of sociobiology that says that an ant's purpose in life is determined by genetics. Also, this theory can be expanded to include primates, including humans. According to this theory, our place in society, where we fit in, is mostly decided by our genes.

A scary thought, IMO.

Studies of identical twins that were separated at birth (in Minnesota, I think) showed uncanny resemblances between the twins even at 50 years old. These people had never met each other, yet both shared traits like sneezing in lifts to surprise people, flushing the toilet before as well as after using and so on. These similarities were not found in fraternal twins separated at birth. The conclusion is that a lot more of your personality comes from your genes than people had previously thought, maybe as much as 90%.

oh that reminds me, various Science Fiction writers have been writing along those lines for ages. Inherited memory and race memory where knowledge etc are passed along blood lines