crude bulbs

indie crude science.

I don't know if ants can look up. But I imagined one doing so. I wondered what senses they use to locate food. Do they scour around, in seemingly random directions until one of them stumbles upon something, bookmarks it and lets others know... some how. I don't know how acute their vision is.

If they started looking up and if they have acute enough vision, they can get more food from me. If a crumb or speck of food falls down, a clever ant can deduce that it must have fallen from above, possibly from a place where more food is stashed away. At the very least there could be more specks of food. Of course, it can't fly up to investigate. So it would have to find a route. Here it would include walking up a wall, grappling on the ceiling and climbing down a hook, then walking down a wire or a rod and then take a dive of faith into whatever it is that is hanging in mid air.

If it found the food like this, knowing fully well that it won't get hurt, it can just drop from the bag of goodies on to the floor, then find its sent trail or whatever navigation cue it uses and hurry back to the colony.

I have not seen any ants dropping out of thin air, yet.


PS: As I wrote this I remembered: 'epigenetics'. I think(in my layman capacity) epigenetics is one of the missing links in my understanding of evolution of species. Natural selection - as in chance mutation of genes as the only cause for evolution (as I understand it) - is too random and too chancy.
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