"Ричард Фейнман. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!/Вы, конечно, шутите, мистер Фейнман! (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

Alameda Street, some ants came out around the bathtub. I thought, "This is a
great opportunity." I put some sugar on the other end of the bathtub, and
sat there the whole afternoon until an ant finally found the sugar. It's
only a question of patience.
The moment the ant found the sugar, I picked up a colored pencil that I
had ready (I had previously done experiments indicating that the ants don't
give a damn about pencil marks - they walk right over them - so I knew I
wasn't disturbing anything), and behind where the ant went I drew a line so
I could tell where his trail was. The ant wandered a little bit wrong to get
back to the hole, so the line was quite wiggly, unlike a typical ant trail.
When the next ant to find the sugar began to go back, I marked his
trail with another color. (By the way, he followed the first ant's return
trail back, rather than his own incoming trail. My theory is that when an
ant has found some food, he leaves a much stronger trail than when he's just
wandering around.)
This second ant was in a great hurry and followed, pretty much, the
original trail. But because he was going so fast he would go straight out,
as if he were coasting, when the trail was wiggly. Often, as the ant was
"coasting," he would find the trail again. Already it was apparent that the
second ant's return was slightly straighter. With successive ants the same
"improvement" of the trail by hurriedly and carelessly "following" it
occurred.
I followed eight or ten ants with my pencil until their trails became a
neat line right along the bathtub. It's something like sketching: You draw a
lousy line at first; then you go over it a few times and it makes a nice
line after a while.
I remember that when I was a kid my father would tell me how wonderful
ants are, and how they cooperate. I would watch very carefully three or four
ants carrying a little piece of chocolate back to their nest. At first
glance it looks like efficient, marvelous, brilliant cooperation. But if you
look at it carefully, you'll see that it's nothing of the kind: They're all
behaving as if the chocolate is held up by something else. They pull at it
one way or the other way. An ant may crawl over it while it's being pulled
at by the others. It wobbles, it wiggles, the directions are all confused.
The chocolate doesn't move in a nice way toward the nest.
The Brazilian leaf-cutting ants, which are otherwise so marvelous, have
a very interesting stupidity associated with them that I'm surprised hasn't
evolved out. It takes considerable work for the ant to cut the circular arc
in order to get a piece of leaf. When the cutting is done, there's a
fifty-fifty chance that the ant will pull on the wrong side, letting the
piece he just cut fall to the ground. Half the time, the ant will yank and
pull and yank and pull on the wrong part of the leaf, until it gives up and
starts to cut another piece. There is no attempt to pick up a piece that it,
or any other ant, has already cut. So it's quite obvious, if you watch very
carefully, that it's not a brilliant business of cutting leaves and carrying
them away; they go to a leaf, cut an arc, and pick the wrong side half the
time while the right piece falls down.
In Princeton the ants found my larder, where I had jelly and bread and
stuff, which was quite a distance from the window. A long line of ants
marched along the floor across the living room. It was during the time I was