{"id":345,"date":"2011-03-20T19:38:02","date_gmt":"2011-03-20T19:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fanagrams.net\/blog\/?p=345"},"modified":"2013-06-03T09:55:07","modified_gmt":"2013-06-03T14:55:07","slug":"oh-so-clever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/oh-so-clever\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh So Clever"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I think of the word \u201cclever\u201d I think of a particular kind of intelligence, one that implies a problem solver, i.e. the ability to find an efficient work-around for an obstacle. \u00a0Additionally, the work-around typically involves a fresh approach, something surprising or unusual in its simplicity. \u00a0Cleverness is more ingenuity than genius.\u00a0 Engineering is a clever profession, and nature is the most clever of all. \u00a0Through the relentless force of evolution, nature has devised the most elegant lures, traps and elaborate mating rituals, solutions to the most harsh or competitive environments, and in the process has woven a virtuoso web equipped with\u00a0checks and\u00a0balances that we can only begin to understand.<\/p>\n

When I read\u00a0a story about desert ants in the National Geographic, I only thought about cleverness. \u00a0\u00a0Desert ants can wander around the featureless desert for hours, but somehow manage to find their way home.\u00a0 Researchers proposed that the ant brain is equipped with some sort of mechanism that \u201ccounts\u201d the number of steps on the way from the nest and then the ant takes the same number of steps returning.\u00a0 Animal navigation routinely surpasses human navigation, but you can\u2019t help but be impressed by a clever ant that can accomplish this on a speck-sized brain that can be scrambled with a casual finger flick.<\/p>\n

And you also have to admire the ingenuity of the researchers that figured this out.\u00a0 The first hypothesis was that the ants used visual cues, so the researchers set up a tiny treadmill in their lab accompanied by moving images of desert scenery.\u00a0\"\"<\/a> The ants were not\u00a0fooled by this and still found their way home in the simulated desert.\u00a0 The next salvo was to alter the stride length of the ants by trimming down their legs, although the researchers were quick to point out that that was not animal cruelty since ants often lose their legs and feel no pain.\u00a0 The ants did in fact come up short on their way home, but the German researchers realized that the ant navigation system might not be on the fritz, the ants could have merely gotten tired, or were handicapped by walking on stumps.\u00a0 So they tried a third strategy, this time making the ants’ legs longer by gluing a pig bristle to each of their legs \u2013 bingo, hypothesis confirmed, the ants routinely overshot their mark.<\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>Share: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I think of the word \u201cclever\u201d I think of a particular kind of intelligence, one that implies a problem solver, i.e. the ability to find an efficient work-around for an obstacle. \u00a0Additionally, the work-around typically involves a fresh approach, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-squibs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVc8-5z","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":347,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions\/347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}