In a famous study Matthias Wittlinger, Rüdiger Wehner and Harald Wolf glued stilts on to the legs of some ants, and shortened the legs of other ants by amputating segments of their tarsi. This allowed them to show that ants count the number of steps they take when foraging.
If someone had done a similar study with mice, or people I would hope they would lose their university post and possibly go to prison.
But we don't see insect suffering as we see vertebrate suffering.
I found it disturbing how few of the news outlets that reported on the study mentioned the ethics of cutting off ants legs. I think many people just don't consider it.
That said, the way that insects like ants react to this kind of injury is vastly different from how you or I might react. If I cut off your legs at the shin you might die from shock, blood loss. The ant can run away right after such an injury.
This is because of differences in physiology, difference in how our bodies heal. 2/
I have mixed feelings about the study. The injuries they inflicted on the ants would have shorted their lives. The process of being captured, pinned down under bright lights and a microscope would have been terrifying for the tiny creatures. Every fear response would be maximized. Their world would have been pure terror.
But ants are resilient. Ants would resume their work when released. They would still even bring food back to their nest!
Some people take this as a sign they are automata. 3/
I don't think we can really know how much harm we are doing. I think it's good to care. To question "is this OK?"
The study never discusses the ethics of cutting off the legs of ants to see how they navigate. I think it should be discussed.
I kill insects all the time, for the record. I don't think this study was wrong or that it should not have happened. But I arrived at that conclusion after a lot of considerations, observations. I never want people to stop asking this question.
@futurebird I feel like a lot of this could have just been figured out with math? Right? I mean this feels a bit like pulling the wings off creatures, I get that they did have a purpose but. It feels... bad. :( I don't like it.
I don't know if math would work. It might be possible to put the ants on a treadmill so they don't travel as far for each step they take, but exposing ants to such a complex artificial environment would also result in injured and dead ants. I want to think that people who study ants have some sense of their tiny needs, their quality of life and that they wouldn't harm them just for fun.
@futurebird@secretsloth Yeah, my second thought was how it could be done without, but that's much more difficult and still less effective at directly answering the question without some guessing. Still, not a huge fan.
My current best idea is to have a maze between two areas they care about with a straight section in the middle of the correct path. The straight section can be swapped out with a longer connecting piece, so the correct turns don't change but the distance does, and seeing if that causes any observable hesitation.
![Fig. 2. From the paper shows how they modified the ant's legs.
"Manipulation of ant legs as performed in the present study. In stilts, attached pig bristles elongated the legs; second, normal unmodified legs, with approximate range of tarsus movement indicated; third, shortened legs (stumps). The right hind leg is shown from anterior [see figure 1 in (18)]."](https://shrimp.thesoftestpaws.net/files/original-9b5ea380-7b5e-4542-8833-75169cf220a2.png "Fig. 2. From the paper shows how they modified the ant's legs.
\"Manipulation of ant legs as performed in the present study. In stilts, attached pig bristles elongated the legs; second, normal unmodified legs, with approximate range of tarsus movement indicated; third, shortened legs (stumps). The right hind leg is shown from anterior [see figure 1 in (18)].\"")
