>> There is no need to justify it: learning about ants is interesting on its own, and so is building a new robot. That's how research gets funded. If you look

>> There is no need to justify it: learning about ants is interesting on its own, and so is building a new robot. That's how research gets funded. If you look at research funding applications there is usually a question about "impact" or "benefits" etc, that you have to answer, so you basically have to explain why you should be given (usually public) money to satisfy your intellectual curiosity. Depending on the funding body you may need to have more or less obvious applications of your research (or none at all; obviously if you're in a purely theoretical field nobody expects you to propose practical applications! But then you have to explain why your research project is of interest to other purely theoretical folks). If the applications are dead obvious, then that's even better for all involved and particularly so the reviewers of the application: they don't have to think about it too much. "Ants' search patterns? Oh, I get it, search and rescue. Check!" and then go to the next part of the application that really makes the heard hurt, like "We propose to study the difference between army ants' and fire ants' antenna use for pathfinding during a storm to determine the effect of species- and group-specific communication on colony search efficiency". Yikes.