An Ant's Tale: There and Back Again ( via Path Integration)

The human brain is capable of perceiving and interpreting information or stimuli received through the sense organs (i.e., eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin) (Weiten, 1998). This ability to perceive and interpret stimulus allows the human being to make meaningful sense of the world and environment around them. However, even as the human being is able to perceive and interpret stimuli information through all sense organs, stimuli is most often or primarily interpreted using the visual (eyes) and auditory (ears) sense organs (Anderson, 2009). However, for the purpose of this paper, the visual information process will be examined.

One of the strengths of this approach is that it looks at thought processes which are ignored by other psychologists. Such processes are memory, attention and perception and have been studied to have an effect on behavior.

Within any community, it is safe to say that the goal of maintaining a society that prospers on for many years is common. Establishing order is key to developing a prosperous society. Order, whether it be defined as assigning roles in society, or establishing a set of rules to maintain control, can be done through various approaches. The pondering question however lies in what is the best approach to establish order. This common question has been prominent throughout time, and has been debated in government and society. The debate in how society should establish order regularly results in contrasting opinions. In the essay "The Myth of the Ant Queen," by Steven Johnson, and in the excerpt “The Code of Hammurabi” from Society and Law in Ancient Babylonia, two distinct approaches to establishing order in society are discussed. I believe that through strict reinforcements, order in society can be established. In the essay “Man’s Nature is Evil” by Hsun Tzu, the human nature in society helps explain why strict reinforcements is the most efficient way to establish order. In Steven Johnson’s essay “The Myth of the Ant Queen,” he describes an interesting way in how the establishment of order arises. He argues that society can build itself up and maintain order without the need of a ruler or a set of laws. Through the observation of ants and how they behave in their environment, he explains how ants are able to establish an intricate yet simple

This experiment was performed to observe the taxis and kinesis of certain organisms. This is important because the organism’s survival and ability to reproduce depends on how they orient to stimuli using senses. We investigated the behavior of pill bugs to determine if they’ll move towards or away from the vinegar through smell. If I place pill bugs in a behavior tray with different chambers, then they’ll move away from the chambers that contains vinegar. A behavior tray with 5 chambers is used and 2 were control while the other 2 has cotton balls with a few drops of vinegar on it. 5 pill bugs are positioned in the center of the chambers and is covered with a transparent cover to observe the organisms for 10 minutes. Results had shown the class

“The Electric Ant” is a science fiction short story written by Philip K. Dick and published in 1969. In this setting, the story takes place in a distant alternative universe. Mankind’s identity and freedom are being questioned in this futuristic society. Indeed, the plot explores the identity of a protagonist who has been disconnected from reality after an accident, by being transformed into an organic robot. A being that is no longer human despite having the skin, the flesh and the physical body of a man. The story focuses on the shift of reality perceived by an organic robot. Nevertheless, it brings us a closer look at how the perspective of reality is approached from the point of view of a sub-social class. As the story goes on, the protagonist becomes more and more obsessed with his individuality and true freedom. The plot emphasis on the development of the main character’s identity throughout the story.

It specifically looks at the memory, sensory and attention, in other words the way information is proceed and used by our minds.

Hippocampus does not encode the location by the tracking distance and the direction movement. The Direction and distance to the place they need to go is encoded. The brain has its own way of finding there navigational own goal-finding cells. Humans and animals, both of our brains help us find where we need to go and becomes very clear. Scientists know that mammals' brains have three different cell types that help navigate. The animal cells work in the brain and work together to help keep the location and movement they are making. New researchers have discovered two more types of brain cells that also help with navigating around space areas. They have found unrecognized structures in the brain that has to find their way

Technology has tremendously changed human social behavior, which has provided a convenient way for people to communicate and collaborate with each other. For instance, Cathy Davidson, the author of “Project Classroom Makeover,” points out, there is a need to renew the current education system so that it meets the new expectation of the digital era. She discusses how technology improves social interaction when students work collectively through crowdsourcing. In “The Myth of the Ant Queen,” Steven Johnson provides the example of the complex systems in ant colonies, cities of Manchester and Internet by emphasizing the importance of collective working that intelligence emerges when people work together. On the other side, Sherry Turkle argues that technology has turned human beings become isolated. In her article “Alone Together: Why We Expect A Lot from Technology and Less from Each Other,” she discusses how humanity is transformed into a “robotic’ moment due to technology. Therefore, technology does not only help to form collective learning and social interaction that can provide an adequate platform for sharing social values, but also isolate people from each other if they rely too much on technology.

One of the fish studies that provides evidence of convergence and cognitive functioning in fish, is Schuster studies on archerfish. Archerfish use a blast of water from their mouths to hunt insects, and Shuster believes these archerfish are making complex intelligent decisions while doing so. Shuster explains how the archerfish hunt, and how they cant hit targets out of water at very high speeds, but in many of Shusters experiments it was concluded that the ability for an archerfish to shoot insects at full speed, and on an angle, was something they learned by watching other fish perform this task. Social learning was very popular with the archerfish.

Everyone is familiar with the state of armed conflict that is war, and for as long as there has been civilization there has been war. Upon first glance, Henry David Thoreau’s “The Battle of the Ants” seems like a simple descriptive story of a battle between two different species of ants, one red and one black, but if one were to further inspect the text, they could see that Thoreau uses the ants and their battle as a satirical allegory for human conflict. Thoreau chooses to use ants as a metaphor to make it clear to the reader that war is futile, pointless, and a waste of life.

senses at input until it emerges as a behavioral response at output. The information we

Animals navigate the world with different types of cues either allocentric or egocentric (Tornick). Allocentric cues are external, such as visual cues or a beacon (tornick). Egocentric cues are cues within the animal such as vestibular systems (Tornick).

This is why there are several different types of behaviours used to describe these specialized survival instincts. One of these would be orientation responses that are divided into two classes called taxes and kinesis. The animal behaviour that is being investigated is taxes. Taxes are the directional movement that is made by the animal in response to a stimulus. The types of stimulus would be food, sound and light etc. “Different taxes (plural of taxis) result in response to different types of stimuli. Each of these forms of taxis can be described by simply adding a prefix to the word taxis. The table below shows the most common forms of taxis (SparkNotes, n.d.)”. For example the prefix for the sound stimulus would be phonotaxis, light would be phototaxis and memory would be mnemotaxis. ”Movements toward a stimulus are positive taxes, while movements away from the stimulus are negative taxes (SparkNotes, n.d.)”. Some examples of taxis would be “Phototaxis is the directional movement of animals in response to light (A snake moving towards the light). Thigmotaxis is the directional movement of an animal in response to touch (A cricket jumping away when touched)(MRS. McCOMAS, n.d.)”. With this information from the investigation, we can move on to propose that there is going to be a type of animal behaver that is going to fall into the taxis category from doing this experiment. Whether it will be a positive phonotaxis or the negative phonotaxis response will consider with the results that we will

A slow red sphere, pulsating with light and energy, rose across the hazy horizon; feeding the once dark and bleak island with colours, sound, and life. It was like an artist’s canvass slowly coming to life, as splashed the surface with colours and hues, and carefully put together his masterpiece. The island suddenly lit up as if someone had suddenly twisted the brightness knob on a television set, and flicked on the volume. The dark and mysterious trees and plants suddenly lit up with radiant joy, and I saw the finer detail of my surroundings in the brightness of the morning sun. As I got up I saw a multitude of ants scurrying about on the dark gnarled root, I gazed deeper into the ants world, staring in fascination at the various dark

should be for the time of day they believed it to be. It was also