The Daily Ant
Myrmecology Dies in Darkness
Author: Benjamin Blanchard
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The Daily Ant hosts a weekly series, Philosophy Phridays, in which real philosophers share their thoughts at the intersection of ants and philosophy. This is the twenty-fourth contribution in the series, submitted by Suzanne Kawamleh. Ants and NGOs “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead …
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Christian Alexander Stidsen Pinkalski and colleagues have a paper about ant poop forthcoming in the Journal of Ecology. Unfortunately, the full article is apparently not yet available online. But if the abstract is to be believed, the researchers confined weaver ants (Oecophylla smaragdina) to the canopy above coffee plants, and fed the ants a diet labelled with a particular…
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The Daily Ant hosts a weekly series, Philosophy Phridays, in which real philosophers share their thoughts at the intersection of ants and philosophy. This is the twenty-third contribution in the series, submitted by Dr. Michael Ruse. All About Ants: What Darwin the Scientist Learnt From Darwin the Christian and What That Tells Us About Darwinism Today Go to the ant, thou…
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Yesterday we observed a less-than-honest photographer on display. Today, we were happy to learn about a nice, short profile of renowned (and honest) photographer of ants (and other small critters), Alex Wild. The article, appearing in Wired, is worth a read – check it out!
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Coding Correspondant Nathan Daly brought to our attention a remarkable photograph that went viral on Twitter last week. https://twitter.com/SimonNRicketts/status/887804157427675136
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As the classic public service announcement goes, “If you see something, say something.” But adherence to this precept clearly generates a problem: if you don’t see something, you won’t say something! It is perhaps because of this mental framework that subterranean ants have received such little work in the scientific literature, compared to their aboveground…
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The Daily Ant hosts a weekly series, Philosophy Phridays, in which real philosophers share their thoughts at the intersection of ants and philosophy. This is the twenty-second contribution in the series, submitted by Chris Blake-Turner. Trantsformative Experience Let me start by making sure I say at least one true thing in this post: ants and humans are very different. I’m going…
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The Daily Ant hosts an intermittent ant film series, Theatre Thursdays. This is the second installment, by our Film Correspondant Derek Langston. Enjoy! Six-legged Celluloid Presents… A review of Ants on a Plane: “I’m tired of these mother formic ants on this mother formic plane!” When I decided to watch and review this film, I chose the rental option…
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Avid readers will remember our article “Feeling Blue? So is This Ant“, in which we featured a beautiful blue ant. Today, we add another ant to our color wheel: This queen is not green with envy, but green with being Oecophylla smaragdina, a widespread species of weaver ant. Why is it green? Who knows!
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We all know how ants forage for food. A bunch of workers are sent out randomly, then, upon finding some delicious munchie, each worker lays a chemical trail back to her nest in the hopes that other workers will follow suit. Whether or not nest mates do in fact reinforce a given trail is dictated…
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The Daily Ant hosts a weekly series, Philosophy Phridays, in which real philosophers share their thoughts at the intersection of ants and philosophy. This is the twenty-first contribution in the series, submitted by Dr. Lauren Ashwell. Dispositions and Ant-idotes Dispositions have seemed to some philosophers to be too spooky and other-worldly to be properties in their own right. Instead, these philosophers…
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Liu Xiaobo once wrote that “life is priceless, even to an ant.” We are thus very sad to learn that the life of Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate who was imprisoned in China up until his medical release a few weeks ago, came to an end on Thursday, July 13th, at the age…
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