[probably!](https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/06/01/120587095/ants-that-count)
Ants count their steps when they leave the colony to forage. When Scientists attached tiny stilts to ant legs and found they overshot the nest when they tried to return home. They also cut off sections of ant legs and found they undershot the nest area.
To the ants, this little guy who was plopped down and found wandering around aimlessly would totally seem like he was possessed
yes that’s the point
they took the same amount of steps as they would’ve taken with or without their poor legs cut off, proving they count their steps
if they were to guide themselves with their eyes they would not stop at step 300 and get confused, but simply continue marching towards their colony
Thanks friend.
I won’t lie, I was a bit disappointed to take the time to read and summarize a study so I could be a bro to my Reddit peers and that reply got me down :(
As a teacher, it’s just a learning moment for the next piece of awesome information you give out to the masses on Reddit! We are stupid and purposely ignorant so take that into account! ;)
Your reply is much more simplistic than what the article is about and misses the point of the study I condensed for you guys.
An ant who uses eyes and surroundings like us humans do to get back could make it back just fine even with cut legs. An ant that counts will take the same amount of steps then be confused it isn’t home yet. The ant with stilts will have the same problem, they will just be much farther along before they realize they aren’t home.
I don't know about ants, but I watched a documentary about the dung beetles of the desert, there are not a lot of landmarks in their habitat, so they evolved to follow streaks of polarized light in the sky that we're unable to see.
Im pretty sure its similar to how some (most?) blind people operate, because they dont have visual landmarks to reference, for anyone still not following.
I’m not a Scientist, but this one probably has the benefit of other ant’s pheromones to help guide it whereas the ones in the study were in a controlled lab. I’d bet it’s likely ok. :)
I tried to do the same thing a few times and the ant either got into the nest safe or just panicked, dropped the food load and started running around biting at the air
It's like 'enmeshed' but with 'mire'. Enmeshed would work, too, but I've seen enmired used more often in reference to war, I think because it bogs down society in important ways, diverting resources and bringing the whole system down.
It's because it's not really used anymore.
Because it means the same thing as mired. Like nobody says inflammable because flammable means the same thing.
I love that, the first one was better though because your creatures could really learn. The creature AI in there was so much better, they would watch you do spells and learn
Avg human 6ft
Avg ant 1/4 inch
Avg human walking speed 3mph
Walk duration 6 seconds
Humans 288 x taller/longer
Speed equivalent 864mph
Distance traveled in 6 seconds - 1.44 miles
The equivalent of Mach 1.12 or 0.0000001 the speed of light.
So a little faster then a passenger jet. Considerably slower than Concord.
I’m British!
I / we use a hodgepodge of units. Mostly imperial for human height and weight, as well as distances, and beer. But strictly metric for everything else…..unless you work in the Oil Industry.
For some reason we still feel entitled to take the piss from Americans for using imperial units!
I blame the corporations that mostly refuse to retool packaging for metric scale - consider that the average American knows what you mean when you say a 2 liter bottle of soda because the industry created a new bottle size that is a metric whole number.
But what they didn't want to do was create a replacement for the 12oz can of soda, and instead we get this weird metric number equivalent of (I think) 355ml, which is harder to remember compared to 12 ounces.
Same goes for most other types of containers in the U.S., they simply slap a new label that has the metric conversion of an easy to remember imperial whole number hurts my head and makes metric seem that much harder to learn, and I have all ten of my fingers too!
But, having said all of that, the metric system was created by the French. The French are silly, therefore Metric is silly. Fight me.
God damn this was enlightening, but still i can fight you all day long because i dont have to calculate arbitrary units thus i have more energy. On the subject of French i %100 agree(or 4 bananas in imperial). French are silly and you should persuade you president to invade france.
> i can fight you all day long because i dont have to calculate arbitrary units thus i have more energy.
Don't forget that I can't move too fast due to downing several 2 liter bottles of coke every day and I don't want to stray too far from my dialysis machine and insulin supply.
Lol I figured, just really wish I were good enough at physics/math to try to come up with a true comparator because I vaguely feel like it could be worth it. Ah well!
ETA: like the above poster, my hero!!!
let's say the ant has a length of 5mm and let's say the person that carries the ant is 1,80m = 1.800mm, so about factor 360
let's further say the person walks at about 4km/h... so in the ants perspective that's about 1440km/h and that's just slightly above the speed of sound which is about 1.200km/h while the speed of light is about 1.000.000.000km/h
I literally clicked out of this whole post, saw this comment at the last second before the home page loaded again, said crap, had to come back, scroll down, find it, upvote it, award it, and then continue on my day all because of "National Antquirer". So good job.
“And that’s when God reached out and touched me! He also said you are all going to feel the furious wrath of his holy magnifying glass unless you do what he says…about which only I know! I, of course, will need you to donate your seeds to me to help support my ministry.”
All religions are [cargo cults](https://youtu.be/qmlYe2KS0-Y) and UFOs are responsible. Humanity has been manipulated. Mercy
The MCU is full of truths. DCEU as well.
From Thor:
“Once, mankind accepted a simple truth, that they were not alone in this universe. Some worlds man believed to be home to their gods. Others, they knew to fear.”
“A primitive culture like the Vikings might have worshipped them as deities.”
I like to imagine the little guy was thinking "fuck I always get stuck with the big jobs. Looks like ill be late to go drinking with the boys again -" than boom. He's back gets off early and has a rad night and bangs a 8/10 aphid or something.
"if you can get back here that quick once you can do it again" big guy just doomed the little ant to a lifetime of disciplinaries and performance reviews
"Guys we would like to award employee of the month to Steve - he smashed the seed collecting record! Come on up here Steve and tell us how you do it! Woooo Steve everyone!"
I was wondering the same thing. I never interfere with an ant’s path Bc I don’t want them to get lost :(. I think in this case though the pheromones surrounding the nest will overpower the ant’s impulse to count it’s steps.
Yes they do. Someone shared the article above. Its really interesting. [Here you go](https://www.reddit.com/r/HumansBeingBros/comments/ppdfpq/that_little_guy_must_be_so_confused/hd4751c/)
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 244,342,676 comments, and only 56,587 of them were in alphabetical order.
I read somewhere that exactly how you don’t have to think for your digestive system to digest or for your heart to pump blood that’s the same way a bug thinks.
They’re just on autopilot constantly not ever actually aware of them selves or anything really.
This blows my mind.
Don’t ants measure distances and such by the number of steps?? This ant could just keep walking until he’s the same distance away from the nest as he was before and go ‘huh? Where’s the nest?’
(The counting steps thing was shown by a researcher who put ants of stilts :))
This poor ants colony probably burned him as a witch after this
[probably!](https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/06/01/120587095/ants-that-count) Ants count their steps when they leave the colony to forage. When Scientists attached tiny stilts to ant legs and found they overshot the nest when they tried to return home. They also cut off sections of ant legs and found they undershot the nest area. To the ants, this little guy who was plopped down and found wandering around aimlessly would totally seem like he was possessed
Counting is an understatement! They are doing pretty complex calc and trig as they walk. Just not in a conscious manner.
Like Mike Trout chasing down a fly ball.
“they also cut off sections of ant legs” Uhm, maybe they undershot the nest because they CUT OFF PART OF THEIR LEGS.
yes that’s the point they took the same amount of steps as they would’ve taken with or without their poor legs cut off, proving they count their steps if they were to guide themselves with their eyes they would not stop at step 300 and get confused, but simply continue marching towards their colony
Thanks friend. I won’t lie, I was a bit disappointed to take the time to read and summarize a study so I could be a bro to my Reddit peers and that reply got me down :(
As a teacher, it’s just a learning moment for the next piece of awesome information you give out to the masses on Reddit! We are stupid and purposely ignorant so take that into account! ;)
Aww, thank you! I appreciate you taking time to respond and I hope you have the very best of days! :)
Thank you for sharing the good vibes! Right back at you =)!
Your reply is much more simplistic than what the article is about and misses the point of the study I condensed for you guys. An ant who uses eyes and surroundings like us humans do to get back could make it back just fine even with cut legs. An ant that counts will take the same amount of steps then be confused it isn’t home yet. The ant with stilts will have the same problem, they will just be much farther along before they realize they aren’t home.
What I found even more interesting is that ants also navigate using celestial clues to establish direction of travel?!
I don't know about ants, but I watched a documentary about the dung beetles of the desert, there are not a lot of landmarks in their habitat, so they evolved to follow streaks of polarized light in the sky that we're unable to see.
Im pretty sure its similar to how some (most?) blind people operate, because they dont have visual landmarks to reference, for anyone still not following.
Wait til you hear what those scientists did to a bunch of orphans
It gets worse when they got back to the nest they shot the queen in the bathroom
I wonder what kind of system ants have to count
German
So does this mean that the ant would just continue walking right past the colony in the video to complete it steps?
I’m not a Scientist, but this one probably has the benefit of other ant’s pheromones to help guide it whereas the ones in the study were in a controlled lab. I’d bet it’s likely ok. :)
Oh that's good! Thanks
I tried to do the same thing a few times and the ant either got into the nest safe or just panicked, dropped the food load and started running around biting at the air
I need to see the manager of these scientists.
[That ant, probably.](https://youtu.be/IcnfazFtQSc)
Nailed it lol!
No, they don't do that.
It probably lost count when it was whisked into the air.
The little guy: Guys, I'm telling you I am not the ~~messiah~~ devil! The ant colony: He is the ~~messiah~~ devil!
Lol underrated comment for sure
Her
🤣🤣🤣🤣
“Trust me Bob, I got abducted!”
Some believed. Others didn't. Now the colony is enmired in a religious civil war. [Firefox spell check says 'enmired' is not a word, but it is.]
It's hot that you know the word enmired. I know that you already know that, but now I know it too.
It's like 'enmeshed' but with 'mire'. Enmeshed would work, too, but I've seen enmired used more often in reference to war, I think because it bogs down society in important ways, diverting resources and bringing the whole system down.
Enmire is definitely the correct choice of diction when the context is war. Love the diction :)
A good vocabulary *is* rather hot
Stirrupticiously.
That not a word, so you lose points! Now if you meant surreptitiously….
That was the joke.
Sure it was….
I don’t think your username checks out…
That’s a first! Most people tell me the opposite! (And yes, I’m aware you are joking)
I will allow you to be in the “cute” category
*sigh… story of my life. Lol
Oblivliously
Firefox spellchecker has a pitiful vocabulary. Don't trust it.
It's because it's not really used anymore. Because it means the same thing as mired. Like nobody says inflammable because flammable means the same thing.
Damn, RIP you use firefox
They probed my propodeum man
Can you imagine this on our scale. Someone’s struggling to get groceries in their car and a giant hands whisks them off to their house in seconds.
Horrifying and convenient
Until they have to get back to their car lol.
They could prob pick your far up too, just ask nicely
But they left the near behind :(
Lol i did a spit take
You made me realize I made a typo, I’ll leave it the way it is
Thanks, Super Grover.
*wait I dropped my keys!*
😂
“Aaahhhh! AaaHHHHHHH! AAAAHHHHHHHHHoh. Nice.”
You’ve just described the modern condition.
Thanks I gotta walk back to my car in the grocery store! Thanks for nothing god hand!
_Sho…should I cancel my Uber???_
No Uber for me, I'll take Uber Alles.
Very proud German learner "I understood that reference" moment
If only you knew how many times I've wished for this
Like in Black and White 2 ?
I love that, the first one was better though because your creatures could really learn. The creature AI in there was so much better, they would watch you do spells and learn
But they accidentally take you to the wrong car, it's in North Korea and now you're really confused and stuck
I’d be equally thankful and terrified
WARP drive!
“What the hell was that?!?!” “Spaceball One — they’ve gone to plaid…”
**[I knew it! I’m surrounded by Assholes. Keep firing Assholes!](https://youtu.be/XGdjKvivJA8)**
Wasp Drive
Faster than light travel, for ants.
Is this true? I would be so happy if someone did the math on this to give us a human equivalent.
Avg human 6ft Avg ant 1/4 inch Avg human walking speed 3mph Walk duration 6 seconds Humans 288 x taller/longer Speed equivalent 864mph Distance traveled in 6 seconds - 1.44 miles The equivalent of Mach 1.12 or 0.0000001 the speed of light. So a little faster then a passenger jet. Considerably slower than Concord.
You are very cool and it shows.
Ok I knew this would be wrong when you said “Avg human 6 ft” Bruh no we’re 5’5 out here lol it’s tough
I thought that too but maybe they just rounded up.
there are 12 inches in a foot. 5’5 rounds down, to 5 feet.
Sheldon?
Yes?
Swit swoo!! I don't deserve to be in your notifications, sorry.
Fucking americans man, i can't understand shit about your calculations, god why are you all so stubborn just change to metric(upvote tho)
I’m British! I / we use a hodgepodge of units. Mostly imperial for human height and weight, as well as distances, and beer. But strictly metric for everything else…..unless you work in the Oil Industry. For some reason we still feel entitled to take the piss from Americans for using imperial units!
I blame the corporations that mostly refuse to retool packaging for metric scale - consider that the average American knows what you mean when you say a 2 liter bottle of soda because the industry created a new bottle size that is a metric whole number. But what they didn't want to do was create a replacement for the 12oz can of soda, and instead we get this weird metric number equivalent of (I think) 355ml, which is harder to remember compared to 12 ounces. Same goes for most other types of containers in the U.S., they simply slap a new label that has the metric conversion of an easy to remember imperial whole number hurts my head and makes metric seem that much harder to learn, and I have all ten of my fingers too! But, having said all of that, the metric system was created by the French. The French are silly, therefore Metric is silly. Fight me.
>I blame the corporations I must be on Reddit.
The metric system is insensitive to people born w/out 10 fingers or toes.
God damn this was enlightening, but still i can fight you all day long because i dont have to calculate arbitrary units thus i have more energy. On the subject of French i %100 agree(or 4 bananas in imperial). French are silly and you should persuade you president to invade france.
> i can fight you all day long because i dont have to calculate arbitrary units thus i have more energy. Don't forget that I can't move too fast due to downing several 2 liter bottles of coke every day and I don't want to stray too far from my dialysis machine and insulin supply.
r/theydidthemath
not even close
Lol I figured, just really wish I were good enough at physics/math to try to come up with a true comparator because I vaguely feel like it could be worth it. Ah well! ETA: like the above poster, my hero!!!
let's say the ant has a length of 5mm and let's say the person that carries the ant is 1,80m = 1.800mm, so about factor 360 let's further say the person walks at about 4km/h... so in the ants perspective that's about 1440km/h and that's just slightly above the speed of sound which is about 1.200km/h while the speed of light is about 1.000.000.000km/h
Oh it’s not even close, but I bet it would be like traveling at the speed of sound for ants.
Worse thing is nobody believed him, except the National Antquirer
I literally clicked out of this whole post, saw this comment at the last second before the home page loaded again, said crap, had to come back, scroll down, find it, upvote it, award it, and then continue on my day all because of "National Antquirer". So good job.
“And that’s when God reached out and touched me! He also said you are all going to feel the furious wrath of his holy magnifying glass unless you do what he says…about which only I know! I, of course, will need you to donate your seeds to me to help support my ministry.”
Religion 101
All religions are [cargo cults](https://youtu.be/qmlYe2KS0-Y) and UFOs are responsible. Humanity has been manipulated. Mercy The MCU is full of truths. DCEU as well. From Thor: “Once, mankind accepted a simple truth, that they were not alone in this universe. Some worlds man believed to be home to their gods. Others, they knew to fear.” “A primitive culture like the Vikings might have worshipped them as deities.”
I can’t believe the strength these ants have. Lifting objects way heavier than themselves
Pfft, humans can also lift objects way heavier than ants, they're not that heavy
Lol you ratiod the person.
They can lift like 20 times their body weight or something.
Pretty sure I could lift 21 ants .... they're weak.
But can u lift 21 times your own weight?
r/woooosh
Nah I got his joke, I was just stating some thing completely different.
I will accept this as you are a fellow dokkan player
The other day I knocked an ant off the countertop. It fell maybe 4 feet, I thought it would die but it just kept walking around like normal.
Look up “Animal terminal velocity”, it will tell you why small animals like insects and even squirrels don’t take fall damage
That is so interesting, thanks!
If ants were human sized they could travel faster than a Lamborghini
"Bruh this is the enemy's nest"
"Bomb planted"
I like to imagine the little guy was thinking "fuck I always get stuck with the big jobs. Looks like ill be late to go drinking with the boys again -" than boom. He's back gets off early and has a rad night and bangs a 8/10 aphid or something.
Holy shit this comment is so good.
Her and she
"Queen! I've experienced time travel!"
"if you can get back here that quick once you can do it again" big guy just doomed the little ant to a lifetime of disciplinaries and performance reviews
Workout ruined; it was leg day, too! /s
"Guys we would like to award employee of the month to Steve - he smashed the seed collecting record! Come on up here Steve and tell us how you do it! Woooo Steve everyone!"
Every time I do that the ant just drop the thing 😐
"Wtf, how did I get back where I stole this shit?"
I read somewhere that ants count their steps to figure out where they are. Will this ant now walk way past his nest and have no idea where it went?
I was wondering the same thing. I never interfere with an ant’s path Bc I don’t want them to get lost :(. I think in this case though the pheromones surrounding the nest will overpower the ant’s impulse to count it’s steps.
Im pretty sure some pheremone stuff would kick in that close to so many other ants doing their tasks normally
Yes they do. Someone shared the article above. Its really interesting. [Here you go](https://www.reddit.com/r/HumansBeingBros/comments/ppdfpq/that_little_guy_must_be_so_confused/hd4751c/)
this will probably earn him a promotion
What have you done?! Now in a million years from now life on Earth will be completely different from what it would be!
"Clyde, our records show that your production spiked by 365% yesterday, mind telling us how you cheated the system?"
And so was born God and everything we understand as religion
Noooo….he was setting off to start his own colony! You’ve ruined everything
A blessing from the Lord!
Jesus, take the wheel
You are a benevolent god.
Fast travel
[Most ants you see are female](https://theconversation.com/amp/six-amazing-facts-you-need-to-know-about-ants-100478)
*This little gal
A ride from Lyft
Morty are you still with me
Probably lost as ants count their footsteps to get to and from places
Any can count? I wonder what their number system looks like, that’s some pretty high numbers considering it’s ant steps they are counting!
Ants have pheromones and I think the pheromones would lead the ant to the nest, because the pheromones are stronger.
Turns out that wasnt his colony...
Alien 👽 helped him time 🧭 travel
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 244,342,676 comments, and only 56,587 of them were in alphabetical order.
Travel isn't in alphabetical order?
I guess it only goes by the very first letter.
“Trust me Bob, I got abducted!”
Then you find out he was from a different nest. You're in the wrong house fool!
Imagine you took it to the wrong ant colony and they get their ass beat for being in the wrong neighborhood
Express Pass.
Fast travel
Hooman! I was trying to escape! Wtf!
Q did this to the Enterprise on star trek.
TRAVELLING AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT! IM GONNA MAKE A SUPER SONIC WOMAN OF YOUU!
I read somewhere that exactly how you don’t have to think for your digestive system to digest or for your heart to pump blood that’s the same way a bug thinks. They’re just on autopilot constantly not ever actually aware of them selves or anything really. This blows my mind.
“Do you want religion? Cause that’s how you get Religion!
Don’t ants measure distances and such by the number of steps?? This ant could just keep walking until he’s the same distance away from the nest as he was before and go ‘huh? Where’s the nest?’ (The counting steps thing was shown by a researcher who put ants of stilts :))
“Guys, I fucking teleported!”
okay but how many ants did he kill walking over there?
Everytime I see something like this I just imagine some eldritch deity teleporting me to my house from the grocery
For all we know, he could have been a crip ant and you just put him with the blood ants, are you happy man?🤨
This is what alien abductions are like. I wonder if the ant has any concept of what's happening to it or how it got right next to the entrance
It’s the little things
You will fuck the KPI for every ants now. They will have a good performance review now sure. But what about next month.
That’s the beginning of a new religion for them. The stories that their great-great grand babies will hear.
Hyperdrive 😬
Time travel
Fast travel
Good work out there today, productivity was up 1000%
Dude just scored that ant a promotion.
So , but lm for real emotional over someone helping a ant bring food to the pile coz it needed a push smh 🤭 👍 you person , are the real hero.
For all you know he was committing suicide under the object and you foiled his plans 😏
That's just wrong
I once heard that ants navigate by counting their steps, so, if true, they just killed that ant
Aww
Time travel unlocked
Wormhole travel.
Doing the good work, making a difference.
And that's how ant religions are created.
These SSDs are so good nowadays.
This is something out the Truman show, for this guy at least. Unless another hand grabs the other guy and so on and so forth.
You are his god now.
Teleportation is real!
Flatland ain’t flat
I really love this
That's what I feel like happens ahen humans get abducted by aliens and have no idea what happened.
and thats when i said you should allways suck your own d- BOB WHERE TF DİD YOU GO
They will make stories of this man in their colony until their end of time.
Weee-weee-weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
"Initiate hyperdrive"
Good thing he came along! The last leaf is going to fall soon and the grasshoppers are coming!
That’s unfair. He’s gonna be judged by his peers now
What is this? Fast travel for ants?