An Inordinate Fondness for Stars and Beetles: Ants and Diabetes

When I was a kid I wanted to be a dolphin trainer when I grew up. I’m pretty sure I went to Sea World and immediately saw my entire future laid out in front of me. I grew out of this dream, which is probably good in light of all the criticism surrounding institutions with dolphin shows. Throughout middle school, I shifted my dreams from the ocean to set my sights on space. I went to space camp not once, but twice... I know I’m a nerd, but a proud nerd. I remember eagerly writing my space camp application to be the commander in our mission, and eventually led my crew to win the Best Mission out of all the groups at camp that week. I even convinced my science teacher to create a special class on space just for me. In high school I began volunteering at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in the space exhibit as a Galaxy Guide. Though I never lost my love for space, I eventually realized my fear of flying in commercial aircrafts would probably transfer to flying in a space shuttle. I thought about other space-related jobs, like CAPCOM and engineer but wasn’t as dazzled by the options as I had been with the idea of Commander Patty Murphy-Geiss. I later learned that the commanders of spacecrafts come from the air force which is something that was not, and never will be, on my agenda.

Me at space camp the first time

Ready to take my role as commander!

As I became more realistic about my dreams, I fell in love with biology. At the same time, while thinking existentially in a philosophy class, I began to believe (being an inherent pessimist) that people are inherently selfish. I argued that every action, beyond sacrificial suicide, can be traced back to selfish interests. The key to being a good person is therefore not to be unselfish, but instead to be selfish in ways that benefit, rather than hurt, others. I won’t go to deep into my own personal philosophy, but if you’re interested in learning more, or more likely changing my mind, feel free to send me a message. Any way, I was also overwhelmed with the fact that I am a single person out of many with a very short time on this Earth. Therefore, my own selfish desire is to leave this earth, not as a shuttle commander, but having made some kind of memorable impact. Basically I want to matter. So how can I manipulate these selfish interests to benefit others? Well I started thinking about possible life-paths that would give me the ability to make a large difference, and ultimately would make my existence significant. With my newfound love of biology, I decided upon the path of a doctor. On top of this, one of my closest friends had been diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes when we were young kids. I distinctly remembered our families’ fear when Chris was rushed to the hospital. I also, for some strange reason, remember visiting Chris in the hospital and receiving a giant stuffed ladybug as a prize. Since that day, I have watched Chris prick his finger, skip dessert, and worst of all, give himself shots on a daily basis (my other irrational fear). I remember telling my mom on that fateful day that I would cure diabetes. Despite my brief obsession with dolphins and my love for space, deep down I always wanted to save other kids from the endless needles and families from the fear I saw on my parents’ faces.

Me with Chris and family back in the day

Me with Chris and family recently

With my new dream in mind, I spent my high school career preparing for medical school. I was ahead of all my peers in math and science, even going so far as to take half of the International Baccalaureate physics track in addition to the biology track. I took summer science camps to learn even more about human biology, allowing me to dissect different things like lungs, an eyeball, and even a fetal pig. When I finally stepped into my first official biology course my junior year, I was ready to memorize everything that came at me. Much to my dismay, my high school biology teacher proceeded to make the subject my least favorite class within a few short months. All that preparation, excitement, and passion thrown away by one person... it still makes me sad. As suddenly as that, my dreams of being a doctor were forgotten and I became unsure of my future once again.

Writing my extended essay on art history my senior year

Don’t fear though, little high school Patty was not completely lost yet. Just as one teacher ruined biology, and for a while science in general, for me, another teacher opened my mind in a completely new way: Mr. Droege. I hope he reads this blog, because he is one of the two teachers that truly inspired me. Maybe you can already guess what he taught based on earlier comments. In fact, assuming he read this blog, he probably laughed at my thoughts on selfishness because I made this statement for the first time while sitting in his philosophy class five years ago. His methods for teaching were completely refreshing to someone who was frustrated with tedious lectures on photosynthesis. I finally left high school with a love for philosophy, and more importantly, a new perspective on how to think critically about the world around me.

Graduating high school with a new perspective

I was sure, as I signed up for my first classes at Grinnell College, that I would double major in philosophy and art history. I figured philosophy could lead me anywhere: law, politics, academia, or elsewhere. However, I soon found that not all philosophy teachers/professors are as creative and fun as Mr. Droege. Shockingly enough (at least to me at the time), I was instead drawn to history. In high school I enjoyed history and always did well, though I never considered it particularly interesting. Now that I have developed a love for history, I distinctly remember one telling moment at the end of my high school career: I sat on the floor of my bedroom with my best friend Kathleen Doll. We had papers from two years of history classes spread around us as we frantically tried to memorize every name and date for our upcoming IB history test. Instead of memorizing important events, we began to plan our imminent world take-over based on the mistakes and successes of past historical figures. We would plant someone as an ally in Russia to prevent the mistakes of Napoleon. We would begin in Paris, because "as goes Paris goes the world." We would attack in a moment of desperation as did Hitler. Remembering this moment now, I am not so shocked that I grew to love history. As I sat in my introduction to history class and wrote my final paper on the music of Woodstock, I realized that history was as multi-disciplinary as philosophy. History is absolutely not dry and boring; it is more fascinating than the best novels, more exciting than the most action-packed movies, and more heart-wrenching than any ballad. In college, I found that I could study any moment in history from any point of view: as an artist, as a feminist, even as a Marxist. I took Winston Churchill’s quote as my new motto: “the more distant we look into the past, the farther we can see into the future.” I began to believe the people that made the most impact are politicians and set out on a new dream once again, one that I still have today.

Falling more in love with history in Paris

Studying history in the Czech Republic

I guess my point here is that I have always thought the answer in life was to dream big, and when those dreams failed, to dream bigger. I went from dolphin trainer, to astronaut, to doctor, to politician. I still dream big, because what is the point of living a life that matters to no one but yourself and maybe a few key individuals around you. My biggest fear, apart from airplanes and needles of course, is to lose the ability to dream big and to thereby stop mattering altogether. I want to live big, not in the sense of making millions or living in a mansion, but by making a positive change in the world that helps as many people as possible. But maybe I was looking in the wrong place; maybe the biggest dreams don’t come from people like astronauts, diplomats, or surgeons but from people, and things, much smaller.

The other week we had a visiting researcher give a lecture at Gobabeb. The topic was ant navigation, and most of the staff had laughed and blown the lecture off thinking it was so silly. I, on the other hand, was exited. How many times have I seen ants wandering around aimlessly in the desert only to wonder how the heck they got there and how the heck they would get home? I’d flicked an ant off my pant leg many times only to wonder if the poor ant would forever be lost after being thrown so far off course. You see, ants in the desert cannot utilize pheromones to navigate like most ants elsewhere; the heat and wind prevent odor trails from lasting long enough. Instead, these desert ants are much more sophisticated: they have odometers and compasses built into their tiny little brains. Yep that’s right, an odometer and a compass in that itty bitty noggin. First let me summarize what these ants do when they get lost: they circle. An ant will walk to where they think their burrow is, and then upon not finding it, begin to spiral out making bigger and bigger circles until they find a recognizable location. Even this simple action seems pretty sophisticated for a tiny little ant… but just wait.

Camponotus detritus

Let’s talk about the odometer. The ants have two different odometers, one of which they rely on more: a pedometer, or a step counter. Now here is where this gets really fun. This researcher and his team changed the length of ant legs to determine if they utilized a pedometer method. They had the ants walk to predetermined location from their burrow using a trough and then cut the legs of some ants, left some ants alone, and added small stilts to legs of the rest. When the ants tried to walk back to their home, the stumpy ants began circling before they reached the burrow, the regular ants made it back, and the stilties overshot before beginning to circle. When the ants were let out a second time, this time with their legs altered from the beginning, they walked out and back successfully regardless of the length of their legs. Amazing! But wait, it gets better. This was all done on flat ground, but what happens when we add hills? The researchers let the ants out on a track with lots of bumps. When the ants reached the end to turn around, the research team replaced the hills with flat ground. Now, one might hypothesize that the ants would walk back the same number of steps as before, and therefore overshoot the burrow completely. However, the ants were able to somehow figure out the inclination, and made it back to their burrow easily!

Now this is when I really scooted to the edge of my seat. You see, my parents can tell you how terrible my sense of direction is. One time, a friend’s parent was driving me home and asked me which way to turn. Despite being in my neighborhood already, I had no clue where to go and had to call my dad. I’m the WORST at directions. So I wondered how these little desert ants could possibly have such a great sense of direction with their tiny little brains while I couldn’t get home from around the corner.

Back to the ants: not only do the ants count their steps, they also have a very complicated compass system that they inherited from their flying ancestors. The compass is called a polarimeter, and is based on the direction of polarized light. As the sun moves across the sky, light polarizes in different directions. However, throughout the day, there is a constant line of symmetry across the sky bisecting the two identical sides of polarized light. If this sounds complicated, that would be because it is.

To make things even more complicated, these ants also utilize landmarks to navigate. The ants seem to take a memorized image of the landscape and constantly compare their surroundings to the image to determine where they are. For example, a lost ant might look at the location of three landmarks, and the distance between each one in relation to the others, to determine how close they are to home. At this point I was extremely impressed; I have yet to master the art of using landmarks to find my way home… pathetic I know.

After this fascinating lecture from a passionate researcher, I began to rethink my take on dreaming big. This man had dedicated his life to ants… not to finding the cure to diabetes, or to space travel, or even to saving lives, but to ants of all things. And yet, I was totally fascinated. Can his work make a bigger difference in the world? Who knows? Maybe navigation systems in lost airplanes can utilize polarized light to find their way home. Not all science has to set out with a big dream, like curing diabetes, to be very cool. Science like the work done by the visiting ant researcher is called fundamental science and has fallen by the wayside in recent years as funders throw money at big dreams. Fundamental science aims to satisfy curiosity, advance knowledge, and achieve understanding. This type of science stands in stark contrast to applied science that aims to solve specific problems. Currently, fundamental science receives a mere 15.44% of all funding, falling behind the 27.03% going towards applied science and the massive 49.81% supporting development (Fundamental Ecology is Fundamental, Courchamp et. al.). With so many problems in the world in need of solutions, one can easily forget that many problems have been solved by simply satisfying curiosity. For example, anticancer mechanisms stemmed from basic research on the naked mole rat. In fact, around 60% of all antitumor and antimicrobial drugs are of natural origin, meaning that most cures will likely come from fundamental research on the natural world rather than looking for a specific solution. Who knows, maybe the big-time researchers searching for the cure to diabetes should stop dreaming big and start wondering how the ant they just flicked of their pant leg will get home.

I’m not sure how this fits into my plans, after all I still dream of becoming an international lawyer in the UN fighting for human rights and/or the environment. I don’t think at this point I want to change that dream to chase after ants. Regardless, I think it is important to recognize the significance of fundamental thought and simplicity when dreaming big. Hopefully when I’m a big shot lawyer sitting in on war criminal trials, I will remember to look toward the ants to lead the way. After all, they are the masters of navigation.

Here are some other pretty cool small things around Gobabeb: