Question 1

True or false: Wilson’s Harvard office was famously cluttered with ant specimens and books.

Accepted Answer

False. While he had many specimens, his office was orderly—colleagues described it as organized chaos, not famously cluttered.

Question 2

True or false: Wilson started his career studying butterflies before switching to ants.

Accepted Answer

False. Wilson was an ant specialist from age 13, earning the nickname 'the ant man'—he never studied butterflies professionally.

Question 3

True or false: E.O. Wilson coined the term 'biodiversity' in the 1980s.

Accepted Answer

True. Wilson popularized 'biodiversity' in 1988, though the term was technically coined earlier by Walter G. Rosen in 1985.

Question 4

True or false: E.O. Wilson proposed the concept of 'consilience' uniting all knowledge.

Accepted Answer

True. In his 1998 book 'Consilience', he argued that all branches of knowledge could be unified under scientific principles.

Question 5

True or false: Wilson won the Pulitzer Prize for his book 'The Ants'.

Accepted Answer

True. He co-wrote 'The Ants' with Bert Hölldobler, winning the Pulitzer for General Nonfiction in 1991.

Question 6

True or false: Wilson believed humans are genetically wired to fear spiders more than snakes.

Accepted Answer

False. Wilson proposed the 'biophilia' hypothesis, but fear of snakes is more innate in humans than fear of spiders.

Question 7

True or false: Wilson was a strong advocate for the theory of group selection in evolution.

Accepted Answer

True. He controversially championed multilevel selection, including group selection, in his later work like 'The Social Conquest of Earth'.

Question 8

True or false: Wilson discovered over 400 new species of ants during his career.

Accepted Answer

False. He discovered about 450 ant species, but the exact number is closer to 450, not 400—though still massive.

E.O. Wilson Trivia Questions