Posts
"It turns out that all the ants had walked the same number of steps, but because their gaits had been changed (the stilty ants, like Monty Python creatures, walked with giant steps; the stumpy ants walked in baby steps) they went exactly the distances you'd predict if their brains counted the number of steps out to the food and then reversed direction and counted the same number of steps back. In other words, all the ants counted the same number of steps back!
Does that mean ants have something like pedometers that do something like counting?
Says professor James Gould of Princeton, commenting on the experiment: 'These animals are fooled exactly the way you'd expect if they were counting steps.'"
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Can Ants Count? : NPR
Can Ants Count? : NPR:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Actually, as well as this proofs in some way they can count and count back, it also proofs they cannot detect speed and cannot integrate, or the experiment would have had a different result. Namely, if they could detect their speed with respect to the ground and could integrate over time to find their total distance traveled the experiment would have had all ants return to their nest all the time.
So it proofs an ability and an upper limitation of abilities.
Thus it is reassuring to know humans are still superior... although it does not have to mean their kind will last longer in the end.
Post a Comment