Hardworking Ants
"Let me give you another instructive instance to graphically illustrate this sham co-operation between ants. Figure 13 shows a rectangular piece of cheese with 25 ants pulling at it. The piece of cheese slowly moves in the direction indicated by the arrow A, You may think that while the front row is pulling the cheese forwards, the back row is pushing it also forwards and the ants at the sides are helping their mates. But this is not at all so. Take a knife and separate the back row. Immediately the piece of cheese begins to move forwards much faster. This shows that the eleven ants in the hack row were pulling the cheese backwards and not pushing it forwards. Each of them was plainly trying to deliver the piece of cheese to the anthill by pulling it backwards, which clearly shows that far from helping the front row the back row was assiduously hampering them, countering their exertions. Actually the exertions of four ants would have been quite enough to pull the cheese forwards, but since they do not co-ordiriate their actions at all, it needs 25 ants to push the cheese forwards.
Mark Twain happened to note this singular “co-operation†between ants* When describing an encounter between two ants, one of which had -chanced upon the leg of a grasshopper, he wrote: 'they take hold of opposite ends of that grasshopper leg and begin to tug with all their might in opposite directions, , . . They decide that something is wrong, they can’t make out what... Mutual recriminations follow... They warm up, and the dispute ends in a fight... They make up and go to work again in the same old insane way, hut the crippled ant is at a disadvantage; tug as he the other one drags off the booty and him at the end of it. Instead of giving up, he hangs on...' Though Twain was poking fun, he was absolutely right when he remarked that:
领英推è
'He does not work, except when people are looking, and only then when the observer has a green, naturalistic look and seems to be taking notes.'
Reading about the shutting of gifted and talented programs in US schools, as well as bureaucratic overheads in orgs reminded me of Yakov Perelman's Physics can be Fun.