TED Talks Thursday – Deborah Gordon: What ants teach us about the brain, cancer and the Internet

by atmara | Aug 28, 2014 | Inspiration, Science, Sustainability, TED Talks, Video

According to ted.com: “Ecologist Deborah Gordon studies ants wherever she can find them — in the desert, in the tropics, in her kitchen … In this fascinating talk, she explains her obsession with insects most of us would happily swat away without a second thought. She argues that ant life provides a useful model for learning about many other topics, including disease, technology and the human brain.”

“Her studies of ant colonies have led her and her Stanford colleagues to the discovery of the “Anternet,” which regulates foraging in ants in the same way the internet regulates data traffic. But as she said to Wired in 2013, “Insect behavior mimicking human networks … is actually not what’s most interesting about ant networks. What’s far more interesting are the parallels in the other direction: What have the ants worked out that we humans haven’t thought of yet?” Her latest exploration: How do ants behave in space?”

Intriguing. Enjoy.

For those of you not familiar with TED Talks here is a brief summery from www.ted.com: “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize”

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I look forward to your thoughts and comments!