Do the ants in your example know they're being studied? When the European powers explored the pacific they wrote off a lot of islands as being devoid of anythi

Do the ants in your example know they're being studied? When the European powers explored the pacific they wrote off a lot of islands as being devoid of anything useful. Now a few hundred years later these islands, mostly untouched by humans, are a gold mine for various niches of biology. Human presence is still infrequent enough that the seagulls don't seem to notice.