What is this, cancer detection for ants? Ants can be trained to detect cancer cells in humans using their antennae, which have “a refined sense of smell,” potentially providing a quick and cheap way for early tumor detection, according to a recent study published in the Royal Society. The researchers trained 35 silky ants to correlate urine from tumor-carrying rodents with a reward (in this case, sugar) and found that ants consistently spent more time near urine samples from the cancerous mice than they did with the healthy samples. Although the results seem solid for now, “we are still far from using them as a daily way to detect cancer,” Baptiste Piqueret, a PhD fellow at Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Germany and the lead researcher in the study, told the Washington Post.

Ants aren’t the only species being tested in cancer research — but they could be the easiest and cheapest to train: Previous studies have shown that dogs have the ability to identify cancer from smelling body odor. Mice also proved capable of being trained to distinguish between healthy and tumor-bearing cells, while microorganisms are attracted to “certain organic compounds associated with cancer.” However, ants are the most receptive to training, the WP reported.

YouTube is rolling out a revenue-sharing model for its version of TikTok short videos, YouTube Shorts, as the video platform works to attract more content creators. The platform will give content creators using Shorts — short-form clips it introduced in 2020 — a portion of ad revenues, according to an explainer (watch, runtime: 0:59). The revenue distribution will depend on the creators’ “share of total Shorts views in the Creator pool, meaning creators who account for 2% of Shorts views would be allocated 2% of revenues from these ads.

The new model comes as digital marketing revenues are on the decline, meaning YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms are battling it out for their slices of the revenue pie, the Financial Times notes. YouTube Shorts is in direct competition with TikTok, whose short-form videos have also been met by Instagram introducing its own version, Reels. Since YouTube Shorts’ debut over two years ago, the platform has reached more than 1.5 bn monthly viewers, compared to TikTok’s 1 bn monthly users in September 2021 — the last month on which there is data available.

Team bonding activities make employees cringe: Employees would prefer to be given perks like money handouts or gift cards to boost morale over attending holiday parties and company retreats, according to the Wall Street Journal. A poll found that many workers have different ideas of what constitutes “fun” than their managers, and others are entirely uninterested in developing personal relationships with their coworkers — meaning mandatory “team bonding” activities are more of a burden than they are a perk. As a result, some businesses are now asking employees for their preferences in order to best allocate funds, the WSJ notes.

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