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This is Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Daniel Ackerman.

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学。我是丹尼尔·阿克曼。

Freeloaders. They just sit around while their hard-working colleagues get things done. But might freeloaders actually be necessary for society to function efficiently¹? The answer could be yes—at least when it comes to fire ants and their efforts to dig nests underground.

吃白食者。就是指那些在勤奋的同事完成工作时自己却无所事事坐着的人。但是吃白食者对社会有效运转来说真的是必不可少的吗？答案可能是肯定的，至少就火蚁及其挖地下巢穴的努力来说是如此。

"Fire ants are quite common in Georgia and in fact most of the bottom third of the U.S., having come here in the '30s from South America."

“火蚁在乔治亚州和美国南方三分之一领土的大部分地区非常常见，它们在上世纪30年代从南美来到美国。”

Daniel Goldman, a physicist² at Georgia Tech. Fire ants are highly social organisms. So, Goldman and his colleagues wanted to know how individual ants knew what to do without a central leader issuing orders.

乔治亚理工大学的物理学家丹尼尔·古德曼说到。火蚁是高度社会化有机体。因此，古德曼及其同事想知道，在核心领导没有下令的情况下，火蚁个体是如何知道应该做什么的。

To find out, Goldman's team labeled individual fire ants with paint and then watched them dig their slender tunnels—barely wide enough for two workers. Turns out, just 30 percent of the ants did 70 percent of the labor³. "I was surprised that we ended up with so few workers actually doing the work at any one time."

为了找到答案，古德曼团队用颜料对火蚁个体进行了标注，然后观察它们挖掘宽度仅够两只火蚁通过的细长隧道。结果发现，30%的火蚁干了70%的活。“最后的结果是，无论任何时候都只有极少的火蚁在工作，这令我非常惊讶。”

A quarter of the ants never even entered the tunnel. Others crawled inside, but left without excavating⁴ a single grain of dirt. These idling and retreating behaviors ensured the crowded tunnels did not get clogged⁵ with insect traffic, which would grind the construction process to a halt.

四分之一的火蚁甚至根本未进过隧道。其余火蚁倒是爬进了隧道，但是它们连一粒土都没挖就出来了。这些袖手旁观和后退式的行为确保了拥挤的隧道不会被火蚁堵住，堵塞会导致施工过程陷入停顿。

And when the scientists removed the five hardest-working ants from the colony, others immediately jumped in to compensate—with no reduction in the group's productivity. Seems that it doesn't matter which ants are working or freeloading at a given time, as long as there is some division of labor to keep the tunnels flowing smoothly⁶. The findings are the journal Science.

当科学家将工作最勤奋的5只火蚁从蚁群中移走时，其它火蚁会马上补位并投入工作——集体生产力没有丝毫损耗。看起来在特定时间内，哪些火蚁在工作或在不劳而获并不重要，只要劳动分工能确保隧道畅通即可。这项研究发表在《科学》期刊上。

Goldman's team also modelled the ants' nest-building on computers. And the most efficient excavation⁷ happened in the simulations where the electronic ants behaved similarly to their live counterparts.

古德曼的团队还在计算机上模拟了火蚁的筑巢过程。而在模拟实验中，当电子火蚁与现实中的火蚁行为相似时，挖掘效率达到最高值。

The study could have implications for robotics. Imagine groups of robots sent to search rubble⁸ for disaster survivors⁹. Or nanobots coursing through our bodies to diagnose illness and deliver targeted medical treatment. Such robot swarms¹⁰ will need to avoid getting jammed up in tight spaces. It might be necessary to program them so some just sit back and watch their comrades do the work.

这项研究可能会对机器人技术产生影响。想象一下，几组机器人被派去搜寻废墟之下的灾难幸存者。或者是纳米机器人进入我们的身体诊断疾病，并进行有针对性的治疗。这种机器人群需要避免被堵塞在狭小的空间里。也许有必要为它们编写程序，以便让一些机器人坐着休息，看着其他同事干活。

Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Daniel Ackerman.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是丹尼尔·阿克曼。