The Daily Ant
Myrmecology Dies in Darkness
Author: Benjamin Blanchard
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Here at The Daily Ant, we generally support the little gal. Yet we can’t help but appreciate a particular financial services group: Ant Financial Services Group hails from China, and according to the Wall Street Journal, it is (unsurprisingly) a “juggernaut of online banking, fund management and other financial services.” Sounds like they chose the right name!
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Cultural Correspondant Abhishek Bhattacharyya recently stopped by the Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium in New Orleans. While there, he captured an important scene: This is, of course, a colony of Atta cephalotes, one of several species of leaf cutter ants. Correspondant Bhattacharyya also shared the following: One man who worked at the museum came up since we were spending a…
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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 fourth contribution in the series, submitted by Cheryl Abbate. Consider the Ant Many people object to raising and killing animals like cows, chickens, and pigs for food because they are conscious (i.e., sentient). Farmed animals clearly…
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Anyone who is a human living in a human society knows that social life carries with it the risk of catching a disease from other nearby humans. Of course, this is also the case for ants in their societies. But a fascinating paper in Ecology and Evolution has recently revealed another commonality: some wood ants, like humans, create…
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In our recent Philosophy Phriday interview with UNC philosopher Ram Neta, Dr. Neta expressed surprise at the fact that ants have brains. But ants do indeed have brains, as certain fungi know very well, and in a study recently accepted in Developmental Neurobiology, Dr. J. Frances Kamhi and colleagues set out to understand how ant brains…
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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 interview with Dr. Ram Neta is the third contribution in the series. On Tuesday, Dr. Ram Neta sat down with The Daily Ant to discuss ants, rationality, and more – Enjoy! Dr. Ram Neta is an Associate…
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[UPDATED with a video, below] Some researchers recently published a study in which they placed Cataglyphis desert ants on treadmills. Check out a discussion of the research here. Update: In response to a comment by Boshua J’lanchard, here is a video of the treadmill in action:
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Many research programs in biology neglect natural history. While investigating sophisticated hypotheses and theories, even very basic information about study organisms remains unknown. This is why a recent paper by Dr. Walter Tschinkel and Daniel Domínguez is so exciting. These researchers, as reported in PLOS ONE last week, photographed and identified most of the seeds…
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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 second contribution in the series, submitted by Larisa Svirsky. It is inspired by Aesop’s fable, The Philosopher, the Ants, and Mercury. The Hypocrantic Oath A philosopher sees a ship wreck and he says, “Oh, God damnit…
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It is not news that U.S. President Donald J. Trump is no friend of the media or, in fact, any other group of humans. But on Monday, in a shameful statement to the National Governors Association, Trump expanded his attacks on all that is noble by insulting the great ant. This moment was captured well by noted insect…
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Meet Sophie Schofield, Dr. Tom Bishop, and Dr. Kate Parr: These three ant researchers wanted to know how drastically different environments impact functional traits in ants. So, they found out, and published their discoveries in Myrmecological News in September of last year.
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The Daily Ant is launching a weekly series, Philosophy Phridays, in which real philosophers share their thoughts at the intersection of ants and philosophy. This is the first contribution in the series, submitted by Dr. Eli Hirsch. As a philosopher who knows little about the details of evolutionary theory, I find it hard to understand questions about the evolution of…
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