英語エッセイ -Inside the ant colony-

英語のあれこれ

2024.06.24

アリの巣の中

TED Talksを使ってエッセイを書く方法
TED Talks
エッセイ
質問

TED Talksを使ってエッセイを書く方法

TED Talks

エッセイ

As of today what do we do to live our lives? Obtain food, build a shelter, raise children, and much more. We usually create a plan and get through every day but there is one insect that thrives like humans without planning or having high-level communication. That is ants.

Ants have a convoluted social organization. Each ant has their own role and they perform its role as it is programmed in its system. In most species, winged male ants and winged female ants fly out of their colony and start a new one close by. Female ants lose their wings and lay eggs after mating; male ants die after that. Fertilized eggs will become female ants and they will have a role as worker ants. Whereas non-fertilized eggs become male ants and they will wait till they are ready to leave the nest and start a colony again. As you know now worker ants consist of female ants but they do not know how or when they need to work. They do not have any communication methods but they will interact with each other by touch, scent, and other stimuli.

There are two amazing skills. First, they can effectively explore large areas without any plan. This is because they will communicate with each other through their antennae and change their movement patterns. Second, some ants have a capability called recruitment. When one working ant finds food, it leaves a scent as it goes back to the nest. This way, other worker ants can return and collect them. When there is no more food left, they will stop producing the pheromone trail and other worker ants will know that there is no more food left. These search technique has been applied to computer models and helped solve problems such as salesman problems and optimization of internet search.

If you are interested in how ants solve these problems just put them in a box and observe their movements. You can learn something from it.