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43: Gravitational Waves, The Loneliest Animal, and Graffiti

Let's Learn Everything!

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The Negative Impacts of Social Isolation on Ants

In 2015, a paper suggested that ants possibly can experience loneliness or at least react negatively to social isolation. The paper suggested that isolated ants only live for six days, whereas living ants can live for 10 times as long as that's so 66 days. To me, what that says is they are deeply colony- Based animals, like you social animals. They have lost purpose without the rest of their colony. But we don't know that that's what they're feeling. Like, they could be. Who knows? If we table that aspect of it and we sort of embrace the silly, totally anthropomorphising size of it, that is a really interesting way to think about animal behaviour. I

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