I’m not sure… ants walk really far. Think of how long it takes us to get human children to the point where they can count to 1000. Do ants just hatch with a sense of numbers?
“Wasted”? They’re literally figuring out how the world around us works!
To be clear this is probably someone’s PhD thesis and they basically do it on their own dime with grants and such. It’s not like the dod playing with bugs for some reason.
How do you determine an ant is confused ?
If you woke up with stilts on one day wouldn’t you be confused? Seems self-evident that ants would be too. Like, “I don’t remember going to bed with stilts on, wtf man, what was I on last night?”