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some of my favorite things...
Apr. 6th, 2007 12:58 pmAnts, bees, wasps, spiders, termites, cockroaches, centipedes, dragonflies...
Ants are truly amazing creatures. They must have one of the most efficient brains on the planet. Here is a tiny creature with astonishingly flexible behavior. It recognises friend and foe, it feeds friends and helps to care for and defend them. Think about that for a second... they will defend friends, even if those friends are not ants. Many ants care for aphids, lerps, and other sap-sucking insects. They protect them and move them to fresh pastures in return for drops of honeydew. I've heard people shrug this off with "Oh it's just instinct", but that is no answer. It is a way of dismissing something without bothering to understand what it is that you're dismissing. Think for a moment about the kind of complex behavior that is required for ants to nurture various species of grazing creature in order for a payoff. Think what it means for the ants to getly pick those animals up in jaws that can crush, and move them to better sap-sucking venues. Think how complex is the mind of a little creature that, when it begins to snow, picks up aphids and moves them down into the warmth of the underground ant nest to place them on the roots of the plants above, to survive the cold outside. Think about the levels of action here: they first extend their nest to the roots of plants that aphids like, then go up, find the aphids and move them (holding them in jaws that could easily make a quick one-off meal of them), down into the nest, then take them to the roots and release them. If you've ever programmed a computer or robot, you have some inkling of understanding of how incredibly complex this is.
All the social insects, ants, bees, wasps, termites, communicate together. Not only do they pass on general chemical hormone messages, but there are more specific messages, like the honeybee's dance that gives abstract direction and distance of a food source. How does such a tiny brain indulge in abstract communications? When I say tiny, they are small in size, but can exceed the complexity of our desktop computers -- a honeybee has hundreds of thousands of neurons in its main "brain" with each neuron making contact with possibly hundreds or thousands of others, making perhaps tens or hundreds of millions of analogue switching elements, each capable of maybe 256 levels of action... the potential for gigabytes of information being channelled almost instantly in a massively parallel computer about the size of a head of a pin, that uses microwatts of power, fuelled by miniscule amounts of sugar, water, air, and protein, and is self-maintaining, self-repairing, and self-reproducing. All that is amazing enough, but some people consider the hive as a larger-scale organism, the way the white blood cells in our bodies are independant animals, but make up part of the super-organism that is you or me. If the hive is an organism in its own right, then its computational powers almost defy imagination.
Termites are wonderful little creatures. They are not "white ants" despite the common name given them. They are social cockroaches. Their skyscraper colonies are brilliantly engineered to maintain optimal temperature and humidity regardless of the external temperatures. These fantastic little creatures open and close holes in the outside of the mound to use the sun and external temperature differences to run a passive air conditioning system. We have recently begun to learn a little from them and a large shopping center in Harare in Zimbabwe has been built to mimic what these marvellous little creatures do. The resulting energy savings translate to costing 10% what a "normal" comparable building costs to run.
My favorite spiders are jumping spiders. These beautiful, cute little creatures are unlike what most people think of when they think of a spider. They don't spin webs, but stalk their prey, using the 3D view from their two enormous front eyes, giving them a cute, intelligent appearance. Jumping spiders are small, so sadly many people never notice them. If they did they would have a much nicer feeling for spiders. I've seen jumping spiders plan their attack, while watching their prey. That is amazing! It means that not only do they have a proper 3D understanding of space, but they can anticipate and plan ahead... all in a tiny little brain.
Web weaving spiders are very cool too. Watching them weave a web, particularly the orb weavers, is just beautiful! Their actions are calm and measured as they use several different kinds of silk for the various tasks. They seem to have a preference for left- or right-handed, but can happily reverse and do things a different way if needed. They are surprisingly adaptable. My sister told me of a spider in her driveway who would spin a web every night, anchoring the central construction line at the bottom to the ground in the middle of the driveway. The trouble is that every day when the car drove out it broke the main tension line, rendering the bottom section of the web useless. This went on for some time till one day the spider figured out a solution. It connected the bottom tension line to a pebble and hauled it up to a little higher than the top of the car. Now the car could drive through without damaging the web, yet the spider still had its central construction line. How amazing is that?! What in heavens name goes on in such a little brain that lets it solve that kind of puzzle so innovatively?
Centipedes are very cool creatures. The mothers builds a nest, lays her eggs in it, and stays to guard them. But that isn't all... while watching over them she cleans the eggs, lifting each of them in turn, delicately rotating it while licking off any fungal spores that might have settled. Think about all the steps that are involved in this. She has to know how to gently lift the eggs without damaging them, and lick them clean, without giving in to the temptation of eating them. Try to program a robot to lift something fragile then clean all its surface while turning it. Now see how amazing is the mind of a centipede.
Dragonflies are exquisite creatures. They have the most complex eyes of any insect, with around 2,000 elements in each eye, giving them an incredibly clear and detailed view of the world around them... and they need it, because they hunt other insects on the wing. Have you seen them catching mosquitos above a pond? We find it hard to swat a mosquito, guiding our huge paddle-hands in with with our complex eyes. A dragonfly has to speed up, slow down, and turn at mind-boggling rates in order to match an evading mosquito, and then grapple with it in mid-flight. By the way, dragonflies are not flies, because they have 4 wings, whereas flies have only 2 (actually, even flies have 4 wings, but the back pair are reduced to tiny, advanced, gyroscopic knobs that rotate in a figure-8 pattern to help them stabilise). Mosquitos are flies.
What an amazing world we arrogantly blunder through, often hardly even seeing what is there.
Ants are truly amazing creatures. They must have one of the most efficient brains on the planet. Here is a tiny creature with astonishingly flexible behavior. It recognises friend and foe, it feeds friends and helps to care for and defend them. Think about that for a second... they will defend friends, even if those friends are not ants. Many ants care for aphids, lerps, and other sap-sucking insects. They protect them and move them to fresh pastures in return for drops of honeydew. I've heard people shrug this off with "Oh it's just instinct", but that is no answer. It is a way of dismissing something without bothering to understand what it is that you're dismissing. Think for a moment about the kind of complex behavior that is required for ants to nurture various species of grazing creature in order for a payoff. Think what it means for the ants to getly pick those animals up in jaws that can crush, and move them to better sap-sucking venues. Think how complex is the mind of a little creature that, when it begins to snow, picks up aphids and moves them down into the warmth of the underground ant nest to place them on the roots of the plants above, to survive the cold outside. Think about the levels of action here: they first extend their nest to the roots of plants that aphids like, then go up, find the aphids and move them (holding them in jaws that could easily make a quick one-off meal of them), down into the nest, then take them to the roots and release them. If you've ever programmed a computer or robot, you have some inkling of understanding of how incredibly complex this is.
All the social insects, ants, bees, wasps, termites, communicate together. Not only do they pass on general chemical hormone messages, but there are more specific messages, like the honeybee's dance that gives abstract direction and distance of a food source. How does such a tiny brain indulge in abstract communications? When I say tiny, they are small in size, but can exceed the complexity of our desktop computers -- a honeybee has hundreds of thousands of neurons in its main "brain" with each neuron making contact with possibly hundreds or thousands of others, making perhaps tens or hundreds of millions of analogue switching elements, each capable of maybe 256 levels of action... the potential for gigabytes of information being channelled almost instantly in a massively parallel computer about the size of a head of a pin, that uses microwatts of power, fuelled by miniscule amounts of sugar, water, air, and protein, and is self-maintaining, self-repairing, and self-reproducing. All that is amazing enough, but some people consider the hive as a larger-scale organism, the way the white blood cells in our bodies are independant animals, but make up part of the super-organism that is you or me. If the hive is an organism in its own right, then its computational powers almost defy imagination.
Termites are wonderful little creatures. They are not "white ants" despite the common name given them. They are social cockroaches. Their skyscraper colonies are brilliantly engineered to maintain optimal temperature and humidity regardless of the external temperatures. These fantastic little creatures open and close holes in the outside of the mound to use the sun and external temperature differences to run a passive air conditioning system. We have recently begun to learn a little from them and a large shopping center in Harare in Zimbabwe has been built to mimic what these marvellous little creatures do. The resulting energy savings translate to costing 10% what a "normal" comparable building costs to run.
My favorite spiders are jumping spiders. These beautiful, cute little creatures are unlike what most people think of when they think of a spider. They don't spin webs, but stalk their prey, using the 3D view from their two enormous front eyes, giving them a cute, intelligent appearance. Jumping spiders are small, so sadly many people never notice them. If they did they would have a much nicer feeling for spiders. I've seen jumping spiders plan their attack, while watching their prey. That is amazing! It means that not only do they have a proper 3D understanding of space, but they can anticipate and plan ahead... all in a tiny little brain.
Web weaving spiders are very cool too. Watching them weave a web, particularly the orb weavers, is just beautiful! Their actions are calm and measured as they use several different kinds of silk for the various tasks. They seem to have a preference for left- or right-handed, but can happily reverse and do things a different way if needed. They are surprisingly adaptable. My sister told me of a spider in her driveway who would spin a web every night, anchoring the central construction line at the bottom to the ground in the middle of the driveway. The trouble is that every day when the car drove out it broke the main tension line, rendering the bottom section of the web useless. This went on for some time till one day the spider figured out a solution. It connected the bottom tension line to a pebble and hauled it up to a little higher than the top of the car. Now the car could drive through without damaging the web, yet the spider still had its central construction line. How amazing is that?! What in heavens name goes on in such a little brain that lets it solve that kind of puzzle so innovatively?
Centipedes are very cool creatures. The mothers builds a nest, lays her eggs in it, and stays to guard them. But that isn't all... while watching over them she cleans the eggs, lifting each of them in turn, delicately rotating it while licking off any fungal spores that might have settled. Think about all the steps that are involved in this. She has to know how to gently lift the eggs without damaging them, and lick them clean, without giving in to the temptation of eating them. Try to program a robot to lift something fragile then clean all its surface while turning it. Now see how amazing is the mind of a centipede.
Dragonflies are exquisite creatures. They have the most complex eyes of any insect, with around 2,000 elements in each eye, giving them an incredibly clear and detailed view of the world around them... and they need it, because they hunt other insects on the wing. Have you seen them catching mosquitos above a pond? We find it hard to swat a mosquito, guiding our huge paddle-hands in with with our complex eyes. A dragonfly has to speed up, slow down, and turn at mind-boggling rates in order to match an evading mosquito, and then grapple with it in mid-flight. By the way, dragonflies are not flies, because they have 4 wings, whereas flies have only 2 (actually, even flies have 4 wings, but the back pair are reduced to tiny, advanced, gyroscopic knobs that rotate in a figure-8 pattern to help them stabilise). Mosquitos are flies.
What an amazing world we arrogantly blunder through, often hardly even seeing what is there.