[ExI] ants again

[spike]

Non ant fans, do delete forthwith, no extropian content here.
 
I saw something today that so amazed me.  Brief review of previous
experiments: ants in my fruit trees, farming aphids which draw sap from the
tree and I don't like that.  Put sticky goo around the base of the trees so
the ants could not get to the ground.  The ants wandered about in the tree
for a while, then apparently leapt to the ground for some odd reason.  The
antomic half-leap was about 25 to 30 hours.
 
Follow-on experiment: I allowed a twig to grow until it touched an adjoining
maple tree into which the ants had free access.  They have no interest in
farming aphids in the maple tree, but will gladly use it for a path to the
orange tree.  Twice I came out in the back to find the twig had made contact
and the ants were streaming across, but what I really wanted to find out is
how long the fruit tree twig had to be in contact the maple before the
simple-minded bugs would inadvert-ant-ly discover the new bridge.
 
Ants must be running an exceedingly simple program: goto orange tree, run
subroutine aphid, return on same path to hole in the ground.  To verify
this, I was hoping to have a maple branch grow out over the orange tree, so
then an ant could go out on the maple, leap down to the orange tree, run
aphid subroutine, leap to the ground, walk to the hole.  This would involve
the ants coming and going on different paths, which I have never seen them
do.
 
Yesterday a branch of the orange tree was growing close to the maple, but
not below.  The distance yesterday was about one cm.  The orange tree branch
was about even with, or slightly above the maple branch.  Today they were
closer, perhaps half a cm, but still not touching.  I noticed there were
some, not many, ants in the orange tree.  I checked for other paths into the
orange tree, but none existed.  Then I noticed there were a bunch of ants on
the leaves of both the maple and the orange, right where they were the
closest.
 
Here was the amazing observation.  Occasionally a breeze would cause the
leaves to oscillate, at which time the two trees would very briefly touch.
The ants were jumping across the gap in those brief instances when the
leaves touched.  They were going both directions in those brief instances.
 
I don't know what in the hell to think now.  Surely they don't reason in any
real sense.  How did they figure out how to jump across?
 
spike
 
 
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