How far will the ants take us?
Audio 48:30
The Secret Wars of the Ants, by Cléo Bertelsmeier.
Editions Favre
By: Caroline Lachowsky
50 mins
How far will these queens of “self-organization”, leaderless, swarm the Earth for hundreds of millions of years, take us?
These extraordinary social insects, queens, workers, soldiers, are even nurses to their war-wounded!
Publicity
Let's discover another absolutely fascinating and complex world: that of ants, these insects which invented agriculture and antibiotics, which are endowed with an extraordinary collective intelligence, but also individual and which have no equal for orientation. and communicate (even inspiring us with algorithms).
Fantastic construction workers, colossal and brave soldiers ready for any war, the ants never cease to surprise the researchers who study them.
With:
Cléo Bertelsmeier,
professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Lausanne, for her book
The Secret War of the Ants
: Sex, Murder and Territorial Invasion
,
published by Favre Éditions.
And
Erik Frank
, specialist in matabele ants, widespread in the south of the Sahara.
Wild predators of termites, they come to the aid of their wounded in fights and bring them back to the anthill to "
cure
" them.
His book
Fight, save, cure
is published by
CNRS Éditions
.
A show originally aired on September 9, 2020.
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