[ExI] ants again

[spike]

> On Behalf Of Damien Broderick
...
> >
> >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?
> 
> They were confronted by an antinomy. In that situation, the 
> only recourse is to close your eyes and jump... Damien Broderick


They would have no reason to fear falling.  But now I am not at all sure
that they jump.  Perhaps ants sometimes lose their footing and fall out of
the trees?  This is how I plan to confirm or disprove: make a bridge out of
masking tape over the goo-band so that the tree is soon full of ants, place
under the tree a white board with a goo circle about a meter in diameter.  I
have a compressor so I can blow the ants away periodically in order to
repeat the experimant arbitrarily many times.  

If the falling ant theory is correct, then the ants will continually appear
inside the circle, even tho they have a masking tape bridge over the goo,
allowing access to the ground.

If the leaping ant theory is correct, then the little beasts shouldn't start
appearing inside the goo circle until I remove the masking tape bridge and
they have enough time to start missing their underground babies, and decide
to leap from the tree.

My guess is that ants are not smart enough to reason that they can leap to
the ground and go home.  Perhaps ants have always been falling out of trees
accidantally, but no human ever thought to measure it.  What crazy fool
would ever do such a thing anyway?  I have been a fan of ants for over 40
years, and it never occurred to me they sometimes just fall.  

I will likely perform the experimant next weekend.  Any speculations?  

spike