We all have heard if not seen the 2015 Marvel movie – Antman. The reference to the movie isn’t necessary for this article. However, we must know who’s the Real Antman in the Biology world.
Ants generally have a strong community (the ant colony) that works together. Similar to human beings, there must be some communication system among the ant colony to work together seamlessly. The American biologist, the real Antman, the father of sociobiology, the father of ant biology, E.O. Wilson, discovered the chemical pathway of communication in ants.
I wanted to know why he wanted to work with ants because it’s such a specific area to dive deep in. As a biology student and having friends who study biology with me, we think of working somewhere close to human beings in the future. Therefore, whenever I get to know people working with animals, insects, or plants, I try to find out why they chose to work in that niche area.
I wanted to know the same about E.O. Wilson. I found a video of him getting interviewed by Harvard University (Youtube channel). He says, “It's been said that every kid has a bug period, you know when you’re nine or ten, you bring home spiders and all sorts of creepy crawlies in jars and so on, and I had a bug and period but I never grew out of it [smiles…]. And I was just delighted to find as I got older that there were careers in science working on bugs and one thing led to another.” This part, “I never grew out of it.”, just inspired me (while writing this…). It was a simple but mind-blowing statement by him. We always tend to forget the purpose of doing a task. We must understand that it’ll always be for a greater purpose than we think that is.
When we try to learn about E.O. Wilson’s work regarding the ants, the titles like The Antman and The Father of Ant Biology are justified. He observed many activities related to the ants. He tried to answer multiple questions about the fitness of these ants according to the habitat, the self-sacrificing nature of some species of ants, mating possibilities without the queen ant in the colony, and many more.
E.O. Wilson has also worked on the evolution of human and animal societies, the importance of habitat size for the sustenance of the animal population, The Theory of Everything, and many more. However, the work on ant communication and the reason for his inspiration to work with ants made me write this blog about him.
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