Cool video of the week

I'm a huge fan of Feynman, and always admired his curiosity about stuff outside of physics. In his biography (if you haven't read it, you're not a proper nerd) there is a passage about experiments with ants:

"I found out the trail wasn't directional. If I'd pick up an ant on a piece of paper, turn him around and around, and then put him back onto the trail, he wouldn't know that he was going the wrong way until he met another ant. (Later, in Brazil, I noticed some leaf-cutting ants and tried the same experiment on them. They could tell, within a few steps, whether they were going toward the food or away from it—presumably from the trail, which might be a series of smells in a pattern: A, B, space, A, B, space, and so on.)"

"I tried at one point to make the ants go around in a circle, but I didn’t have enough patience to set it up. I could see no reason, other than lack of patience, why it couldn’t be done."

Well Mr Feyman, not only can it be done, but it happens in nature...

Real Bioluminescence, Chameleon Octupus and Ant Networking

If you've been spending too many hours in the lab pounding out luciferase assays, these couple of TED talks are a quick reminder of how cool real biology is. The first video starts with some amazing bioluminescence patterns being generated in the deep sea, but even cooler is the last clip of an octopus changing color. The second is a more science-oriented talk by Deborah Gordon on her amazing research on the self-organizing behavior of ant colonies. Makes you wonder whether similar principles underlie the workings of other complex biological system like cells and the brain. Here's a link to a brief essay by Gordon if you're interested in reading more. 2007 Gordon, D. M. Control without hierarchy. Nature 4468:143. Enjoy!

Inside the Anthill

Plaster casts of the part of the anthill you can't see:




Awesome! Lots more cool details and pics in Walter R. Tschinkel's original paper.