Look Who it Was Random video

EO Wilson - Why I study ants (6/15)

3,120 views · Published 10 October 2017 · 1:10 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Science & Technology

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To listen to more of EO Wilson’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFy4RrrJIGYWsipS3A5JHbZl

EO Wilson (1929-2021) was an American biologist, researcher (sociobiology, biodiversity), theorist (consilience, biophilia), naturalist (conservationist) and author (two Pulitzer Prizes). His biological specialty was myrmecology, the study of ants. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]

TRANSCRIPT: I'm often asked what it is that I see in ants. How could I maintain a lifetime passion for these little insects? And the answer is very easy. They really represent a world of their own. You know, they are possibly... and their social behaviour as close as we will ever see to what higher social organisation might look like on another planet.

They're that different, you know. They communicate entirely by smell and taste, almost entirely. Media that we just don't comprehend at all because we're audio-visual. They're chemical. So we have to study them in a very roundabout way to understand what they're saying to each other. And they have extremely complicated societies with caste systems and complex communication to organise the defence of their nest and the gathering of food out in the foraging fields and so on. You could spend a whole lifetime on one species and there are some 10,000 species known.

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