But an ant baby looks like a little white worm, if you wish, and it needs all the care. And then you have the adult stage, which we kind of connect to being an ant. So a little bit like a caterpillar from a butterfly, you have a larval stage, you have a pupa stage. They normally start out doing brood care. And normally, workers concentrate for part of their life on a certain job. SUSANNE: Well ant colonies, basically, are a family group, with the mother, the queen being in a way the head, even though she doesn't organize it. What does that really mean for ants? You specialize in social behavior, can you talk a little bit about how ants have that social behavior that makes them kind of different than our society. Like you talked about in your book, the social behavior. But yeah, compared to us, I would say they're not as smart.ĮRIC: One of the terms is drones, and we sort of everyday use, we think of drone as something that's automated or not as smart. So they're not little kind of robots who always do the same thing, by far not. They can learn, they can remember, they can forget, they sometimes show individual personalities. Individual intelligence, let's say, add up. They managed to come to a consensus agreement among many of the colony and sometimes show kind of swarm intelligence. Nevertheless, them managed to have very well organized societies. I think compared to us, they are less smart. Foitzik, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast all the way from Germany.ĮRIC: So to start out with a really great, but simple question we got is: how smart are ants? She's an evolutionary biologist at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, and the author of Empire of Ants: The Hidden Worlds and Extraordinary Lives of Earth's Tiny Conquerors. Susanne Foitzik, one of the world's foremost experts on ants and their behavior. Our museum visitors love watching our colony of leaf cutter ants scurrying around, and they sometimes ask: how smart are ants? For the answer, I turned to Dr. They can be found on nearly every bit of land on our planet, they outnumber humans on Earth at least a million to one, and observing their behavior for even a few minutes reveals the fascinating complexities of their society. I'm your host, Eric, and many of our visitors are fascinated with ants. (3) Email: institution is an equal opportunity provider.ERIC: From the Museum of Science in Boston, this is Pulsar, a podcast where we go to the experts for answers to the most frequent questions we get from our visitors. Department of Agriculture, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, D.C. Submit your completed form or letter to USDA by: To request a copy of the complaint form, call (866) 632-9992. To file a program complaint of discrimination, complete the USDA Program Discrimination Complaint Form, (AD-3027) found online at:, and at any USDA office, or write a letter addressed to USDA and provide in the letter all of the information requested in the form. Additionally, program information may be made available in languages other than English. Individuals who are deaf, hard of hearing or have speech disabilities may contact USDA through the Federal Relay Service at (800) 877-8339. Braille, large print, audiotape, American Sign Language, etc.), should contact the Agency (State or local) where they applied for benefits. Persons with disabilities who require alternative means of communication for program information (e.g. Department of Agriculture (USDA) civil rights regulations and policies, the USDA, its Agencies, offices, and employees, and institutions participating in or administering USDA programs are prohibited from discriminating based on race, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, or reprisal or retaliation for prior civil rights activity in any program or activity conducted or funded by USDA. In accordance with Federal civil rights law and U.S.
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