Friday, November 15, 2019

Friday Smirk


Bet you can't guess what is going on here, a bionic ants or perhaps a Formicidae circus?

No, it's actually a scientific experiment. Biologists have always wondered at the way in which ants seem to have an uncanny ability to find food which they take back to their nest and then to return again and again to the same spot, sometimes quite some distance. It's unlikely that their brains are sufficiently complex for them to form an "internal map" and so it was a bit of a mystery. The answer, surprisingly, turns out to be that they count their steps and this experiment proved it. By making their legs slightly longer (hence the stilts) the ants were observed to attempt a return to a food source but over-shoot it (i.e. their stride was now longer), apparently the poor little things were extremely confused!

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