No Stupid Questions

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Can you teach ants to fear? (lemmy.nz)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/nostupidquestions

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Ants release chemicals when they die that attract other ants, to fight off the threat. This is annoying, because squishing an ant that bit you is likely to attract more bitey ants.

Do ants have a chemical signal for "all ye who enter here, either turn back or abandon all hope"? Can you teach a hive to fear a certain place? Or do they just keep coming forever?

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It sounds silly, but this is literally the basis for most research. Ask a seemingly simple question you don't know the answer to, quickly realize that it's a lot more complicated than it sounds, search journals for existing research in the area and find it lacking, write up a proposal and convince someone to fund you, do a lot of experiments, and if you don't go crazy or run out of funding, write a paper about it and submit it to journals for peer review.

I wish you good luck!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm no entomologist, but man this sounds like fun. Now you've got me imagining making a career out of taking what is essentially shower thought questions and running with them.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Well shoot - nobody's an entomologist until someone hires them to look at bugs. You can be a freelance entomologist all you want. Nobody can stop you.