Ants may look like simple insects, but their colonies can solve surprisingly complex problems without anyone directing them. In 2014, NASA and BioServe Space Technologies at the University of Colorado Boulder sent 800 common pavement ants to the International Space Station to find out whether that ability would survive in microgravity.
The experiment, known as “Ants in Space,” divided the insects among eight chambers aboard the ISS. Researchers could open barriers between sections, giving the ants progressively larger areas to explore. Cameras recorded their movements so scientists could compare their behavior with ants conducting the same searches on Earth.
