New studies show that the majority of ants don't work.
Your productivity will not suffer.
What people can learn from it.
15/11/2023 3:44 PM

Ants Can be amazingly ineffective:

The whole world is teeming with insects – even though humans are making it increasingly difficult for them to survive. The fact that they have made it this far evolutionarily is also considered a success of diligence and division of labor.

However, recent studies have uncovered a much underestimated talent of insects: doing nothing. The scientific view of an anthill shows an astonishing amount of inactivity. Ants are examined in the laboratory in a glass box.
Before moving in, the researchers painted the ants with a unique combination of colorful dots in order to be able to tell them apart. Then they filmed their activity for months, sometimes during the day and sometimes at night, to find out whether the motionless ants were perhaps just taking a break or resting from night shift work. Using statistical methods, the researchers were able to identify several fields of activity in which the individual ants specialised.
- Around 10 percent collected building materials and food outside the nest.
- 16 percent took care of the offspring and each other.
- Slightly more than 30 percent wandered wildly through the area in search of some activity – and
- a full 40 percent just sat around like that.

To learn more about the dynamics, the researchers removed particularly busy or particularly inactive ants in the various groups.
The amazing discovery: the group that lost its draught horses did not lose any productivity. The workload was absorbed by the previously idle ants. A few of them became the most active of all. Lazy ants are systemically important So the inactive ones formed a reserve. However, one that is not easy to fill up: where the people sitting around were missing, the busy ants just kept going.

This shows that "relaxing" is not an activity that is simply taken if necessary. Rather, some ants have a special talent for it. The threshold of urgency at which they start moving may be higher. When it comes to efficiency, people often think of "slimming down".
Universities cancel permanent positions, clinics have to close.
The result is a system that constantly demands maximum performance from everyone – but collapses as soon as an external shock occurs or the draught horses burn out.
On the other hand, the ants show us that even in the ultimate competition, the survival of the fittest, those who leave room for improvement in productivity win. The model calculation confirms that rotten ants are an important resilience factor for the long-term survivalof society.
And one more thing: even among the busy ants, a large part is only active half the time. Humans could cut off a slice of the ants' work-life balance.
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