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fun facts
how do ants know when another ant is dead?
when ed wilson was a young assistant professor at harvard in the 1950s, he observed that when ants die — and if they're not crushed and torn apart — they just lie there, sometimes upside down, feet in the air, while their sister ants (almost all ants in a colony are ladies) walk right by without a glance. that is until about two days after an ant's passing, ed discovered, when the corpse appears to emit a chemical signal that changes the living ants' behavior dramatically.
all of a sudden what was once a pile of gunk on the colony floor becomes a "problem to be solved." once the signal is in the air, any ant that happens by grabs the corpse and carri…