Why Scientists Made Ants Walk on Stilts
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 964 Ratings
🗓️ 8 February 2021
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about why people have illusions of control; that time scientists made desert ants walk on stilts to test the pedometer hypothesis; and how to reduce your chances of getting hurt when you fall.
Illusions of control may arise not because humans ignore evidence, but because they're very sensitive to it by Kelsey Donk
- Yon, D. (2020, December 2). It’s not necessarily deluded to feel in control when you’re not. Psyche; Psyche. https://psyche.co/ideas/its-not-necessarily-deluded-to-feel-in-control-when-youre-not
- Yon, D., Bunce, C., & Press, C. (2020). Illusions of control without delusions of grandeur. Cognition, 205, 104429. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104429
The time scientists made ants walk on stilts… for science (obviously!) by Cameron Duke
- Carey, B. (2006, June 29). When Ants Go Marching, They Count Their Steps. Livescience.com. https://www.livescience.com/871-ants-marching-count-steps.html
- Shi, N. N., Tsai, C.-C., Camino, F., Bernard, G. D., Yu, N., & Wehner, R. (2015). Keeping cool: Enhanced optical reflection and radiative heat dissipation in Saharan silver ants. Science, 349(6245), 298–301. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aab3564
Everybody Falls. Here's the Right Way to Do It by Ashley Hamer
- Villaveces, A., Mutter, R., Owens, P. L., & Barrett, M. L. (2013). Causes of injuries treated in the emergency department, 2010. Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) statistical briefs. Rockville (MD): Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (US). https://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb156.pdf
- Lozano, R., Naghavi, M., Foreman, K., Lim, S., Shibuya, K., Aboyans, V., ... & Remuzzi, G. (2012). Global and regional mortality from 235 causes of death for 20 age groups in 1990 and 2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010. The Lancet. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)61728-0/fulltext
- The Right Way to Fall (Published 2017). (2021). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/well/move/the-right-way-to-fall.html?_r=0
- Steinberg, N. (2017, June 5). How to fall to your death and live to tell the tale. Mosaic. https://mosaicscience.com/story/falling-science-injury-death-falls/
- Raphelson, S. (2018, January 11). How To Tumble With Care When It Gets Slippery Outside. NPR.org. https://www.npr.org/2018/01/11/577414890/how-to-tumble-with-care-when-it-gets-slippery-outside
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from |
| 0:04.6 | Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Goff. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about why |
| 0:08.8 | people have illusions of control, that time scientists made ants walk on stilts, and how to reduce your chances of getting |
| 0:16.4 | hurt when you fall. |
| 0:18.0 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:20.5 | If you've ever felt like you successfully wished a traffic light into turning green, |
| 0:24.4 | but you played a slot machine just right to get a jackpot, then this story is for you. |
| 0:29.4 | No, you didn't actually have control over that light or the slot machine, but there is a reason you thought you did. |
| 0:36.8 | And you're not delusional. |
| 0:38.3 | You might just be extra sensitive to your environment. |
| 0:41.8 | Studies suggest that it's actually really common to feel like you have |
| 0:45.6 | control over the uncontrollable. For example, in a 1979 experiment, scientists wired a button to a light bulb and had volunteers judge how much |
| 0:55.6 | influence they had over the light bulb turning on and off. But the button did nothing. |
| 1:00.5 | They weren't in control of the light bulb at all, but the volunteers still |
| 1:05.2 | thought they could influence when the bulb turned on and off. |
| 1:09.2 | A stories like this can make us feel like people just disregard evidence that's right in front of them. |
| 1:14.6 | But that may not be the case. |
| 1:16.5 | Instead a new study says we might develop illusions of control because we're very sensitive to evidence. |
| 1:23.0 | So for the study, researchers asked volunteers to come to a lab |
| 1:27.0 | and wave their hands over a motion tracker |
| 1:30.0 | to move a dot on a computer screen. |
| 1:32.0 | Sometimes they were in control of the virtual dot, |
... |
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