Overview

During my undergraduate studies, I was part of the establishing team of the Natural History Museum, which at that time was under development at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. My work was to create an interactive exhibit of an ant colony, which included performing many experiments for better understanding of ants’ behavior. However, the main challenge of this project was to design (physically and conceptually) a system that on one hand is as natural as possible for the ants, and on the other hand, interactive, usable and interesting to the audience.

The following video clip demonstrates some of the interactive experiments, entitled: "earthquake", "shortcuts" and "traffic". A detailed explanation on each of the experiment can be found on the next section.
Interactive experiments



Eartquake

The Earthquake experiment demonstrates ants' behavior of following a pheromone scented trail. Ants deposit a certain amount of pheromone while walking, and prefer following a direction rich in pheromone rather than a poorer one. When part of the trail is moved the ants can no longer sense the scent and can no longer follow the original path. Some ants gather on the "edge" of the scented trail trying to find out how to continue while some turn back to the opposite direction. With time, a new trail will be formed. How long will it take to form a new trail? Does it depend on the distance the scented part was taken away?


Shortcuts

It is well known that ants are capable of finding the shortest path from a food source to the nest (Beckers et al., 1992). The Shortcut experiment explores this behavior and tries to find out what happens when a shorter path becomes available. Will the ants use it and change their route? If so, how long will it take? In the video we can see that an individual ant has "accidentally" found the shorter path. Can an individual ant make the difference and start the formation of a new trail? Does the behavior of finding a shorter path rely on chance?


Traffic

The Traffic experiment explores ants' behavior when the sudden appearance of an unexpected obstacle has interrupted the initial path. Once the obstacle has appeared, those ants which are just in front of the obstacle cannot continue to follow the pheromone trail and therefore they have to choose between turning right, left or backwards. With time, a new trail will be formed. Does the size of the obstacle affect this behavior? Can we predict on which side of the obstacle a new trail will be formed?



* Beckers R., Deneubourg J.L. and S. Goss (1992). Trails and U-turns in the selection of the shortest path by the ant Lasius niger. Journal of theoretical biology, 159, 397-415.
Presentations and additional research work

The exhibit introduces a novel approach of incorporating live animal interactive displays into a natural history museum, and as such, it has been a source of attraction for both museum architects and animal behavior scientists. The exhibit prototype was presented to researchers and experts from all over the world.

As part of my work, I also supervised undergraduates' research projects on ants' social behavior. On these projects, the behavior of making shortcuts was further examined as well as the behavior of an individual ant at times of alarm, in contrast to the behavior of the colony.