{"id":585,"date":"2008-05-14T06:31:34","date_gmt":"2008-05-14T10:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=585"},"modified":"2008-08-06T22:00:58","modified_gmt":"2008-08-07T02:00:58","slug":"if-only-we-could-teach-them-not-to-bite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=585","title":{"rendered":"If only we could teach them not to bite"},"content":{"rendered":"

USF Professor discovers fire ants play dead to survive<\/a><\/p>\n

Fire ants create territories, care for their young and even fight to the death to defend their homes. But USF professor Deby Cassill and her Experimental Design in Biology class at the St. Petersburg campus have discovered another interesting quality: Fire ants can also play dead.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Cassill and the class have posited two explanations as to why the ants fake their deaths. One was to ensure the survival of valuable younger workers to tend to the queen and increase the colony’s size. Another was that newly hatched ants, more apt to injuries in battles because of their soft external skeletons, are less aggressive.<\/p>\n

Cassill, a biologist specializing in evolutionary biology and the evolution of social behavior, said ants and human beings are similar in more ways than one.<\/p>\n

“Ants are one of the few social species that are anatomically very different from humans but a lot of their social behavior parallels human behaviors,” Cassill said. “So what I bring to the research on social behavior is kind of a psychological point of view. I’m interested in what the individual does and how they interact with others.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

USF Professor discovers fire ants play dead to survive Fire ants create territories, care for their young and even fight to the death to defend their homes. But USF professor Deby Cassill and her Experimental Design in Biology class at … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-9r","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":94,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=94","url_meta":{"origin":585,"position":0},"title":"Pulitzer nominee: fire ants book","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"November 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"FSU biologist Walter Tschinkel wrote a book about his life's passion, fire ants. And now it's been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. When is the movie coming out? His 723-page tome \"The Fire Ants,\" published last spring, is now a nonfiction nominee for the Pulitzer Prize. The Pulitzers are awarded\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Science in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Science in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=5"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":112,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=112","url_meta":{"origin":585,"position":1},"title":"Science in elementary school","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 2, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Dr. Free-Ride has an interesting couple of posts up about elementary school science education. In one post she talks about what looks like a shortage of any decent science in the elementary school level. In the other post she asks what can be done to make science exciting and relevant\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the Classroom"","block_context":{"text":"In the Classroom","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1485,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1485","url_meta":{"origin":585,"position":2},"title":"Dr. Scott (NCSE) at USF","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's a story in the University of South Florida paper The Oracle about NCSE's Dr. Eugenie Scott's upcoming appearance there: Evolution expert seeks to inform creationists Bird said Scott is one of the most famous and internationally known faces in science education today and called the $5,000 expense of bringing\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1485#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1472,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1472","url_meta":{"origin":585,"position":3},"title":"DARWIN DAY SEMINARS–FEBRUARY 9-11, 2012","author":"Jonathan Smith","date":"January 30, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The Department of Integrative Biology at USF \u00c2\u00a0will be hosting the 2012 Darwin Day Seminars February 9-12. The seminars cover a series of events examining evolution and its role in science, education and politics. Guest speaker will be Dr. Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education,a\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1472#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1811,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1811","url_meta":{"origin":585,"position":4},"title":"Darwin Day stuff","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 24, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I haven't found very much about Darwin Day in Florida yet, but here is what I know about. If you have an event I missed, mention it in the comments. Tampa Bay United Coalition of Reason presents: Darwin's Gift, Science brings New Hope For Humanity Saturday, February 9th 2013, at\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":595,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=595","url_meta":{"origin":585,"position":5},"title":"Clogged, itchy, cold, slugs, and lab","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"May 27, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"==> Someone must have left the seat up. The International Space Station occupants are in trouble now. Their toilet isn't working! Feel free to leave the obligatory potty jokes in the comments ... you know you want to. ==> It started near the science lab. Students at East Lee County\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 9 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 9 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=595#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}