Do you really need a weatherman on TV to tell you if its going to rain today? Or
weather.com to tell you how cloudy or rainy it is going to be in the next few hours?
One of the interesting theories I have heard is that animals can recognize big changes coming in the nature before we humans know about it (without the use of technology). This theory probably may have plenty of proofs already, I am not just aware of it and hence I am calling this a theory at this point. It is said that animals are aware of an ensuing earth quake or any other catastrophe even before human senses can pick up. Many animals display strange behavior before any major earthquakes and that is explainable because they are more susceptible to the subtle environmental changes than we are.
When I googled on this topic, I came across this PBS article that said animals can hear infrasonic sounds during earthquake and gets terrified. This way the article rationalizes about the animals learning about the impending danger ahead of time. Anyways, my point is that animals are more tuned into the nature and are more sensitive to changes in the nature than we humans are.
One of the simple techniques that villagers use to predict rain is look for the clouds and the darkness (greyishness) of the clouds to tell if its going to rain. But that is kind of natural to look at clouds. However, one other place to look at is the behavior of the ants. Even when it is sunny and there are no signs of clouds, the villagers say that ants can recognize if rain is on its way.
When I was in high school, we played plenty of Tennis on clay courts. It was hard to find these concrete courts in India then. We (our club) did not own a rain cover, and if it rains then our game was washed away for that week. But for all the matches (not as big as a tournaments) that we had to plan, this rain was an uncertainty. One day one of the elderly gentleman taught me that we can look at the behavior of black ants to know if it is going to rain. If these black ants carry food on their head and are moving from a burrow on the ground to a safer place, then ants are sensing imminent rain to that area. You can see this as a thin line of black ants carrying white piece of food. From then on we looked for ants carrying its food around to decide if its
going to rain the next day.
That makes sense because ants want to protect their food during the rain and hence will move their food storage to safer areas. Ants are able to recognize and forecast the rain better since they need to protect theri food from rain. Probably ants have developed that skill over time since it helps their survival. And once they know that it is going to rain, they move their food to safer areas.
It is fascinating for such a small creature to sense the nature's happenings ahead of time, and then protects itself accordingly. But hey, there might be many more interesting things in this world that we might not aware of!
-Nidhi
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Can ants replace your weatherman?
Do you really need a weatherman on TV to tell you if its going to rain today? Or
weather.com to tell you how cloudy or rainy it is going to be in the next few hours?
One of the interesting theories I have heard is that animals can recognize big changes coming in the nature before we humans know about it (without the use of technology). This theory probably may have plenty of proofs already, I am not just aware of it and hence I am calling this a theory at this point. It is said that animals are aware of an ensuing earth quake or any other catastrophe even before human senses can pick up. Many animals display strange behavior before any major earthquakes and that is explainable because they are more susceptible to the subtle environmental changes than we are.
When I googled on this topic, I came across this PBS article that said animals can hear infrasonic sounds during earthquake and gets terrified. This way the article rationalizes about the animals learning about the impending danger ahead of time. Anyways, my point is that animals are more tuned into the nature and are more sensitive to changes in the nature than we humans are.
One of the simple techniques that villagers use to predict rain is look for the clouds and the darkness (greyishness) of the clouds to tell if its going to rain. But that is kind of natural to look at clouds. However, one other place to look at is the behavior of the ants. Even when it is sunny and there are no signs of clouds, the villagers say that ants can recognize if rain is on its way.
When I was in high school, we played plenty of Tennis on clay courts. It was hard to find these concrete courts in India then. We (our club) did not own a rain cover, and if it rains then our game was washed away for that week. But for all the matches (not as big as a tournaments) that we had to plan, this rain was an uncertainty. One day one of the elderly gentleman taught me that we can look at the behavior of black ants to know if it is going to rain. If these black ants carry food on their head and are moving from a burrow on the ground to a safer place, then ants are sensing imminent rain to that area. You can see this as a thin line of black ants carrying white piece of food. From then on we looked for ants carrying its food around to decide if its
going to rain the next day.
That makes sense because ants want to protect their food during the rain and hence will move their food storage to safer areas. Ants are able to recognize and forecast the rain better since they need to protect theri food from rain. Probably ants have developed that skill over time since it helps their survival. And once they know that it is going to rain, they move their food to safer areas.
It is fascinating for such a small creature to sense the nature's happenings ahead of time, and then protects itself accordingly. But hey, there might be many more interesting things in this world that we might not aware of!
-Nidhi
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