You’re going to see a lot of ads for Memorial Day sales, being that the whole point of the long weekend is now apparently to get good deals on electronics. For our money, though, you won’t see a better ad campaign than the one put together by the folks at science video channel Smarter Every Day, who trained a leafcutter ant to carry a tiny sign for their show. Okay, well, trained may be a strong word. They actually tricked the ants into carrying the sign, and in doing so, offered a great lesson about how the nocturnal ants work together in specialized teams to  prepare chunks of leaf to be returned to the colony.
If you’re wondering how the team got an ant to carry the sign for them, you’ll have to watch the video, because I don’t want to spoil the surprise, which is…weird.
(via Smarter Every Day)
- Watch an ant hunt larvae inside a carnivorous plant
- You can track a whole ant colony with QR tags
- This robot ant colony should be easier to study
