Boing Boing: World Cup played by ants

Tuesday, June 6, 2006

World Cup played by ants

Now I know why the FIFA World Cup is such a big deal. It turns out that it's played by ants with a ball stolen from a dung beetle. That is exciting!

In the wild, the ants recognize enemies by their pheromones. The organizers of the game used this natural ability to make the ants "ant-agonize" each other, by feeding the Japanese team with Kagoshima pork and the Brazilian team with spare ribs in order to alter the ants' pheromones.

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posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:31:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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