Experiment with a (real) ant.

Damián Gabriel Paz Adderly · 2005-12-09T18:46:59

The other day I was sitting in the bathroom (don't laught) looking at the floor and then I saw a little red ant there. My first impulse was to kill it, but, as I was going expend some more minutes with my bussines I decided to do an experiment, which I'll describe next: I took the champoo and draw a circle (of about 4cm) around the ant, letting it locked up inside with the intetion of seeing how the ant would react to this. The ant began to follow the wall of champoo, apparently looking for a way out, going back and fort the exact center of the circle and staying there a while, like if it was deciding where to try next. It did three attempts to walk over the wall without success, it sank into it and slid inside again. Then it started to follow the wall again (kind of desperately). At the end it went to the center of the circle again and remained a few seconds there, then it walked directly into the wall of champu (this time underneath it) and, half walking, half swimming, it succeded to pass trough. I must confess that I did not expect the ant to be able to find a way to get out there. I belived ants where more like an instinct based automat than an intelligent animal. Conclusion: The ant was served with a problem, it tryied several (kind of ingenious) ways of getting out of there, and it did it. The ant solved the problem. Epiloge: Of course, I respect intelligence very much and for that reason I let the little ant continue it's way and live. Now I have an anthill in the kitchen. If it fits, I would like to hear your thougts about this and animal intelligence in general.