Thursday, April 22, 2004
The tale of the Amazon expedition
Seems that this Professor (Ffegwt I think his name was) had been running
an entomological expedition in the Amazon basin, and noticed that the
paths left by the soldier ants were not being grown over as you'd expect,
but staying quite clear. Further investigation showed that another species
of ants was responsible, so he spent some time studying them. They'd send
out 'teams' of ants up and down the cleared bit to make sure that nothing
started growing there, keeping the edges tidy, etc. As he watched them, he
realised that there were a number of slightly larger ants who'd go out
with the teams and which appeared, in some way, to be organising the
others - not many of them, nine or ten he thought...
Anyway, as an experiment, he collected one of these ants and kept it to
see what happened; after a day or so where the ants milled about in chaos,
another ant from the ranks filled the gap and joined the others in a small
anthill apart from the main one, then took over the leaderless team and
things were back to normal. Not one to leave well alone, though, Ffegwt
then released the ant he'd collected and watched what happened - which was
that it made a beeline (antline?) for the small anthill where it was met
by the others and killed. While he was watching this (with his magnifying
glass), the good professor spotted a small bit of wood just by the
entrance to the anthill which seemed too regular to be natural, so he
examined it more closely - and was just able to make out the very small
lettering which read:
Highway Main Ten Ants ONLY!
an entomological expedition in the Amazon basin, and noticed that the
paths left by the soldier ants were not being grown over as you'd expect,
but staying quite clear. Further investigation showed that another species
of ants was responsible, so he spent some time studying them. They'd send
out 'teams' of ants up and down the cleared bit to make sure that nothing
started growing there, keeping the edges tidy, etc. As he watched them, he
realised that there were a number of slightly larger ants who'd go out
with the teams and which appeared, in some way, to be organising the
others - not many of them, nine or ten he thought...
Anyway, as an experiment, he collected one of these ants and kept it to
see what happened; after a day or so where the ants milled about in chaos,
another ant from the ranks filled the gap and joined the others in a small
anthill apart from the main one, then took over the leaderless team and
things were back to normal. Not one to leave well alone, though, Ffegwt
then released the ant he'd collected and watched what happened - which was
that it made a beeline (antline?) for the small anthill where it was met
by the others and killed. While he was watching this (with his magnifying
glass), the good professor spotted a small bit of wood just by the
entrance to the anthill which seemed too regular to be natural, so he
examined it more closely - and was just able to make out the very small
lettering which read:
Highway Main Ten Ants ONLY!
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