Myrmidons

A red ant is put on the surface of a mirror. The ant studies its reflection: moves its head, tries to feel the image with its antennae and mandibles.

If an ant is put instead on the surface of plain glass with similar ants on the other side, it doesn't behave like that. But if it receives a dot of blue paint on its "forehead" and then put on a mirror, it will clean the paint off upon seeing it. It won't do that before it is put on a mirror. If the dot is on the back of its head and cannot be seen in the reflection, it won't either. If the dot is brown, and cannot be seen on the background of the ant's head, the ant still won't clean it off.

A mark on the head is the standard test for self-recognition in a mirror. A creature that understands that it is seeing its own reflection will normally try to investigate the mark or remove it once it sees it in the mirror. Until now, this ability was shown (besides humans) in apes, dolphins, magpies and elephants.

And now, it appears, in red ants.

Seems like this nontrivial task doesn't require very many neurons!

Link to the article: http://www.journalofscience.net/File_Folder/521-532(jos).pdf

Legend of the One cover process

I have painted the cover for Elena Kasyan's ☞ The Legend of the One, and it is published!

Subscribe to my Patreon ☞ or my Facebook page ☞!

I have also painted both endpapers, and also did the typesetting, assembly and most of preprint.

The pen is mightier

When the movie "The Bridge on the River Kwai" came out, tourists flocked to Thailand to see the bridge that the British POWs had built.

Problem was, there was no bridge. Or rather, there was, but in the wrong place. Pierre Boule, who wrote the book which the movie was based on, did not check his facts, assuming that if the Bangkok - Rangoon railroad, building which the Japanese killed off 12,000 POWs and around 90,000 local residents, had run along Kwai, the bridge must have crossed the same river. In reality the famous bridge was across Mae Klong.

In the end, Thailand renamed the river. Now a stretch of Mae Klong a few miles long, across which the bridge runs, is called Kwai Yai - Big Kwai. I expect the tourists are happy.

Alien vs Monstro

Is it just me, or does the whale actually look much scarier?