When it comes to Red Harvester ants, Dr. Gordon is the world’s foremost expert on these little guys. Unlike me, she never had an ant farm as a kid, nor did she really have an interest in their superhuman strength. Her interest came almost as a side project, as she used the ant’s interaction algorithms to explain how Stem cells know what cells to become. Today, she has a 30 year research legacy studying colony growth and societal interaction. Listen as we discuss how to count ten-thousand of these little guys in one sitting, when harvester ants plan their orgies, and I reveal the brilliant zombie idea that she is going to put into her next research paper.
Websites:
Ants in Space AND Dr. Gordon’s world-wide ant experiment
Books:
Ants At Work: How an Insect Society is Organized
Ant Encounters: Interaction Networks and Colony Behavior
TED Conference
