Cambridge, MA - In a move
that has sent shock waves
through Harvard's academic
community, legendary entomologist
Edward Wilson has
declared his relationship with
ants to be officially over, OEB
departmental sources confirmed
Tuesday. “I am sick
and tired of those goddamned
little things,” he wrote in a
memo posted Saturday on the
OEB departmental website.
E.O. Wilson
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“Edward has decided that the time is ripe to move on
to bigger and better opportunities, and for the foreseeable
future will sever his ties with the greater ant
community,” said departmental spokesman Donald
Baylor during an hour long press conference in the
Museum of Natural History.
“From now on, Professor
Emeritus Wilson intends to
spend his time studying the foraging
patterns of elephants -
from a safe distance, he assures
us,” he said.
Sources close to Wilson, who
declined to be identified, said
that they could sympathize with
his decision, noting that his ant
career has lasted decades. “Ed
just can't bear the thought of
even another minute studying
those little bugs,” said one colleague
at Berkeley. “And who
can blame him? They work tirelessly
for no reward, they can
barely see, and let's not forget that they are tiny as
hell. They run around carrying grubs for God's
sake.”
Wilson caused a stir earlier this year when he attended
the National Conference on Elephant Anatomy,
and proceeded to ask panelists where they were hiding
the elephants' other pair of legs. According to
conference sources, he then demanded to know
“what that thingamabob attached to the elephant's
mouthparts” was doing there. But Wilson reserved
his harshest criticism for the panelists' denial that
elephant feet were evolutionary adaptations specifically
“for crushing as many ants as possible.”
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Although the announcement may come as a surprise
to most of his colleagues, there were warning signs
that Wilson might be fed up with his ant research,
according to Stanford University professor Deborah
Gordon. Early in 2004 during an ant conference, she
recalls that he interrupted the conference proceedings
to curse every known species of ant, and their
progeny unto the third generation. “His eyes wide,
he shouted out his innumerable complaints about
ants, about how they make his skin crawl, and his
nose itch, and how it stings when fire ants bite, and
how his sandwich was devoured by a horde of 'these
little monsters' only hours earlier,” said Gordon.
“I had to throw myself in front of our demonstration
colony to prevent Edward - insensitive, intolerant,
Southern, and brandishing insecticide - from eradicating
my precious little darlings,” said Gordon's
graduate student Jessica Shors. When Wilson
attempted to use his shoes and
a loaded M-16 to smash the
ants, security intervened, she
said.
Students in Harvard's OEB
department had noticed erratic
behavior as well. “Suddenly, he
seemed to have taken to walking
anteaters on leashes early in
the morning,” noted third year
graduate student Angie Berg,
who said that she regularly
passed him on the way to work.
And at the 2005 departmental
Christmas party, he brought not
his usual fare, but instead baked
“ant cookies, ant brownies, ant
brittles, and ant popsicles,”
according to Matt Hegreness, a graduate student in
the Hartl laboratory.
News of Wilson's departure from ant entomology
comes on the heels of his recent disclosure that he
had an improper relationship with a subordinate harvester
ant on his research team during the summer
of 2001. Wilson, who maintains that his relationship
with the ant was “consensual,” was not immediately
available for comment.
Upon release of Wilson's announcement, ant stocks
fell 0.8% on the New York Stock
Exchange.
HSP