Ed Wilson, Lord of the Ants

Many times, I like to watch a television program while I'm eating a meal. It usually doesn't matter what it is so long as it's mildly entertaining. Sometimes I'll settle for videos on the Nintendo Channel (on the Wii), if that gives you any indication as to how low my minimum standard is set. But sometimes I'll tune in to something as I sit down to my meal -- something which I otherwise would have passed over -- and it turns out to be so enjoyable that the meal is forgotten as soon as the hunger is sated and the program is watched until it reaches its conclusion or else something else should happen to rouse me.

"The Lord of the Ants" seemed like a good pick. The other episodes I saw in my short glimpse at Nova's listings on Hulu were either entirely too dull or else were too intriguing for their own good. I didn't want to sit down and watch a 52-minute episode. I wanted to eat my gormeh sabzi, watch something entertaining while doing so, and ten minutes later turn it off and move on with my day.

Oh, but for pleasant surprises!

Ed Wilson is not a name I was familiar with prior to watching this program(; and in truth, I only watched the first 24 minutes before I had to stop). But this elderly man, I soon learned, is indeed deserving of the label of "hero" or "legend" which such greats as Sir David Attenborough have given him.

This man discovered pheromones.

It's something we take for granted. Every child of 10 knows -- or if he doesn't yet he soon will -- that ants communicate by way of odorous chemicals called pheromones. Every child of 16, no doubt, has by that age seen the Bic pen experiments where ants will follow the path of the ink (due to a chemical in the ink matching one used by the ants for trail-marking). But do we ever stop to ask ourselves how old this knowledge is -- or how new?

For my part, I place this kind of knowledge somewhere ambiguously between the Middle Ages and the modern era. Obviously everyone today knows about pheromones, electricity, and diabetes. Less obvious, though, is how far back we must go before we lose that knowledge. Of the three provided examples, electricity is doubtless the easiest to place: everyone knows that electricity was not harnessed for use in common folks' homes or appliances prior to the 1870s. Next comes diabetes: some laypeople and many medically-educated people know that knowledge of diabetes extends back to Aristotle (who wrote on it), some 2300 years ago. But pheromones? How long have we known about pheromones? 20 years? 200 years? 15? 50? I don't know. This is the sort of thing which goes into my ambiguous gray box. Factoids like "deer are colorblind" or "tigers lick their meat off the bone, they don't gnash it" or "salinity correlates with buoyancy" are things which I could just as easily see being known to Aristotle as I could see them being not known to him.

Anyway, I'm waxing philosophical a bit. The point is, I had no idea how famous this guy is amongst his peers nor how famous he is -- minus his actual name! XD -- to the rest of us, as well. Not until I saw this video, anyways. So check it out!