What will they find next? Goldbricking beavers, just playing in the mud. “Stop swimming on your back like that, you look like an otter! All you need is an abalone!” the other beavers will say. Or, in the beehive, “Hive-Unit 10043303 you have failed to meet your projected nectar quota three weeks in a row!”
Scientists have discovered the slacker ant. I quote, in full, an article found in the Sunday 16 November 2003 issue of the Japan Times (without permission, I apologize in advance to the Kyodo news service and will of course remove the article if they so desire, just let me know guys):
- 20% of worker ants idle lazybones: study
SAPPORO (Kyodo)
Contrary to popular belief, 20 percent of worker ants are not particularly hardworking, researchers said Saturday.
The discovery is the result of observations of three separate 30-strong colonies of black Japanese ants (Myrmecina nipponica) according to Eisuke Hasegawa, an assistant researcher in evolutionary biology at Hokkaido University’s graduate school of agriculture, and his research team.
The team transferred three colonies of ants to a man-made nest and marked them for observation. Hasegawa and his team said they observed the ants three hours a day for about five months from May last year.
Hasegawa said they discovered that about 80 percent of the ants engage in some sort of work, such as cleaning the nest or gathering food, but that the rest are mostly idle.
The situation remained the same when the researchers removed six busy ants from one colony; the busy ants that remained had to work even harder while the lazy ants continued to do little or no work.
Scientists have suggested that some ants may avoid working due to old age or inherent laziness. Hasegawa said the idle ants could be contributing something to the colony that they have not yet determined.
I see Noise-to-Signal beat me to it: #http://www.noise-to-signal.com/archives/000377.html
Meanwhile, Prof. Eisuke Hasegawa is my kind of guy. He’s also done research on the mating frequency of hornets (here: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1046/j.1343-8786.2003.00018.x/abs/ )and Sympatric Speciation and Evolution of Social Parasitism (see here: http://neco.biology.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~qshinka/program-e/2D1.html ). Prof. Hasegawa, if you read this, send me a mail, I’m your biggest fan.
If they’re old, if they’re retired, it’s an admirable thing for ants to do, taking care of the aged.
But maybe they’re soldiers. I wonder if the scientist tried starting a fight with two colonies to see how the lazy ants reacted?
Or, maybe they’re some sort of outcasts, untouchables, living ghosts, ants that all other ants must pretend do not exist.
Maybe the idle ants together own the colony, maybe even own the busy ants.
Maybe there’s an unemployment problem in the ant world, and these ants would work if there was enough work to be worth going off unemployment.
Maybe there’s a strike. Scientists should check back in a few weeks.
Or, you know, maybe they’re poets, singers, actors, all the things we might have a hard time identifying from our perspective. But to an ant, they’re acting (‘Charley’s Ant’?), they’re reciting things like ‘one more leaf ten times my size, and all for a look from my true one’s eyes’, they walk with a certain fascinating rolling motion between the thorax and the abdomen.
I was thinking night shift.
Or, you know, “Hey, sailor, you gonna carry those leaves all day?”
Badumchish.