> On Sun, 21 Oct 2001, Spike Jones wrote:
>
> > Can anyone suggest how to make an instrument which
> > would watch an ant trail and measure flux?
OK I had a hell of an idea today.
My notion is that the ant migration I witnessed yesterday was
started by an ant that found a suitable place for moving the
colony, so she walked back to the colony trailing a chemical which
means in ant, "everyone pick up a larva and walk this way."
So here's the idea. If I can find another ant migration in progress,
I attempt to recover and produce whatever chemical means
"grab an egg and come". Then whenever a colony of ants is
discovered in the house, one simply brushes a strip of the chemical
from there, leading to the outdoors. Then the colony picks up
and walks right outta your house, carrying the young with them.
So I need to create an instrument which would recognize the
difference between a zero-flux ant-line and a true one way
migration like the one I saw yesterday. Wouldnt that work?
I even had an inspiration on how to recover some of that
chemical. When I watched the migration I noticed that the
forward antflux was about 10/second, and the reverse
had about 1/second or perhaps 0.5/second. So what were
the backwards goers doing? I figure they must be "repeaters",
gals going back along the line replenishing the scent trail which
would otherwise evaporate. Does that sound right? They
would walk backwards along the trail, excreting a new line
of come-this-way-juice. What else would they be doing?
So when I find a migration, I need to capture the backwards
walkers and find out what they are excreting. Right? spike
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