6.1 Ants vs Humans

Pivot! Pivot!

If that word didn’t make you think of basketball or Excel, but of a couch instead, there’s a good chance you’re a fan of the TV show Friends. In one of its most iconic scenes, Ross, Chandler, and Rachel try to carry a couch up a staircase while Ross keeps yelling “Pivot!” to coordinate — meaning “rotate!” or literally “use it as a pivot.”

A very similar problem inspired a real experiment conducted in 2024 at Stanford University — and you can try it yourself in this room. It works even better with other people (up to 8).

Participants had to move an object shaped like a giant “T” through two narrow slots. First, individuals tried alone. Then groups of people. Then single ants — using a miniature version of the setup — and finally groups of ants.

And how did the researchers explain the rules to ants?

They didn’t. They used a clever trick: they made the ants believe the T-shaped object was food that needed to be carried back to the nest on the other side of the slots. And that was enough.

What were the researchers trying to discover?

They wanted to compare how well humans and ants collaborate on the same task.

So, what happened?

Ants working together performed better than ants working alone — predictable, right? Strength in numbers.

And humans?

Groups of humans performed only slightly better than individuals — but only when they were allowed to communicate. When all communication was blocked — no talking, no gestures, not even eye contact — groups did dramatically worse than individuals working alone.

Ants can coordinate without communication: they simply react to the forces they feel through their legs.

We can’t. Without communication, we stop behaving like a group. Just like in the story of the Tower of Babel, we remain together… yet unable to cooperate.

And here’s the twist: although humans — individually or in groups — were, on average, better than ants at this task, some human groups (the ones unable to communicate) performed worse than some groups of ants.

Now it’s your turn.

Did you try the task with others without communicating?

If so, keep one thing in mind: a group of ants might have done better than you.