I can enjoy a recent note on the work of Marko Pecarevic, a Croatian biologist who just finished up a Master’s at Columbia, for a number of reasons: he thought up an interesting thesis subject that dug into intensive behaviour that occurred daily right in front of millions of oblivious humans; he made up a uniform that would allow him to poke around unfettered, and he managed to make ants interesting.

“… If people, viewed from a great height, look like ants, do ants, viewed at close range, look like people? Of course not. Ants have six legs, compound eyes, no lungs, and impossibly narrow waists, and they tend to hang around with aphids and mealybugs. Still, behavioral similarities make them excellent analogues. Ants, like humans, are into career specialization, livestock herding, engineering, climate control, in-flight sex, and war; for them, as for us, free will may or may not be an illusion.

… Employing Google Earth (forgive him, he’s from Zagreb), he chose three median-rich stretches—Park Avenue, the West Side Highway, and Broadway—then made himself an official-looking ID, dressed in parkish green, and started collecting ants, travelling the city with a duffelbag of garden tools and Evian bottles filled with antifreeze. No one bothered him …” (New Yorker)