The beauty of the human brain is that it is so large, nicely quartered and accessible for probing, cutting, shocking and tracing. But this obscures the overriding characteristics of the brains of much smaller animals and insects. Yet they have within them much of the characteristics that are so much in demand for research. The lowly ant is to me the most intriguing. Consider the following:
While painting a wall, I came upon a rather large red ant that was alone, he was there for a reason but certainly not known to me, he appeared to have a mission in mind. As I continued to paint, a barrier was raised between where the ant was and the ground below. I made a three sided enclosure some ten or so ant lengths wide with upward directed walls a hundred or so ant lengths long which now "boxed" him in. The box was open at the top. To one side, I carefully provided an escape path, an unpainted area which was not from an ants point of view, visible. And the odor of the paint must surely have overwhelmed so that the path could not be revealed by smell.
There was a wall of paint below him, to his right and left. He was in a blind alley with only escape possible by his going upward With an opening above him and I continued to encroach upon the ant by painting, and the distance between the walls became smaller and smaller. I painted a barrier across the top, while leaving a path open which would permit him to once above the walls to turn either to the left or right. By turning to his left he could entered another blind pocket, or by turning to his right after journeying some hundred ant lengths or so, he would be faced with yet another wall of paint, and there was to his right and left, another path between paint walls. His choice, pass through, or reverse course and return to the area where he had most recently been entrapped.
The ant seemed not at all confused, he would approach the fresh paint, seemingly touch it without getting into it, perhaps cleanse his foot, and try another area. In a short time, he decided that upward was the only way out and moved in that direction.
Exiting from the box into which he had been painted, he didn't even challenge the wall of paint above, and immediately moved to his right. There was no obvious reason for not going left but he made his choice and stuck with it. There some hundred or so ant lengths ahead was the other paint wall with a carefully painted "exit" below and another blind alley above.
On reaching the wall and without testing the paint, he turned downward and passed through the opening between the paint walls although the pathway was constricted to only three or so ant lengths. He tested the walls not at all and went straight through the opening.
Free from the paint enclosures, he went about his business not returning once to the painted area.
Do ant's have memory, can they communicate their past experience with others, do they leave a trace behind for following. Regardless, packed into a brain that is minuscule are all the message centers necessary for the ant. And this solitary red ant made all the right decisions.
Now compare this to the way of sheep. If you have an enclosure which holds a group of sheep and there is an opening which has a low bar across it, the first sheep will leap over the bar to escape and so will all the sheep that follow. The surprise comes when you remove the bar, and the sheep continue to leap in the air over the imaginary bar.
You might consider the sheep as an evolutionary improvement over the ant, but having viewed these two demonstrations, you have to wonder.
Such it is with most evolutionary theories. David Moore in his book, The Dependent Gene, sets out to characterize the development of traits as the result of not the preprograming of DNA, but instead a directional tweaking of cells to adapt to their environment. Interaction between cells is not a new discovery, bacteriologist have long noted the way in which cells swarm or stick together. In the inanimate world as well is evidence of interaction. If you look at the flow of a stream of water, you discover that it ceases to flow in a straight line which would surely be the least friction and therefore permit the greater passage of water over a period of time, but a series of bends develops that permit the water to flow more quickly in one area and slower in another. The bends result as water contacting sides of the "ditch", is at first restricted in its flow and then the higher flow on the opposite side then eats away at the bank which eventually results in the snake like flow. David Moore looks at the causative factors as being either inner-dwelling or outer. On this basis he looks at the way traits would develop, resisting change or filling a void. Such it is with the flow of water.
Then consider two very different species, the monkey and the crow. Put a tasty morsel inside a container with an opening through which the monkey can stick his hand, allowing him to grasp the object of his (or her) desire. Making a fist to gather up the tidbit, the monkey finds himself trapped and being unwilling to let go of the prize, remains. Compare that to the antics of two crows trying to fish a morsel out of an enclosure using a bit of wire. One discovers that if the wire has a hook in it, it can be used to snare the object. Watching, the other crow, the one takes the hooked wire and "fishes" with it as did the other. But there's more, the other crow not having a tool, takes a piece of straight wire and bends it to form a hook, making another tool. So much for bird brains, and brains much smaller than those that man possesses! In Robert Chambers's book, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, he quotes Swainson on the intelligence of crows. Swainson was a firm believer that the crow is man's counterpart in the bird order. "If men had wings and black featehrs, few of them would be clever enough to be crows." Rev. Henry Ward Beecher (son of Harriet Beecher Stowe).
As we learn more about crows, we must agree.
And ant brains are smaller yet.
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