Why Are Scientists Doing Experiments Where They Have Ants Run On Tiny Treadmills?

Daily Mail- When scientists want to know how an animal walks or runs – from stumpy Chihuahua Dogs to huge African Elephants – they use a treadmill. But the smaller an animal is, the trickier this treadmill is to design. Scientists have pondered how desert ants find their way home for decades, but without knowing how the tiny critters walk they have been left stumped. Now, researchers have designed a strange spherical treadmill that allows ants to run just as they do in the wild to study the mechanisms of the insects’ homing behaviour. Unlike the flat treadmills at the gym, the ant treadmills involved tethering the insects with dental floss glued to their back above a lightweight Styrofoam ball, which rolled as the ants walked. Sensors in the device allowed the researchers to read how the ants moved by recording every step they took. The treadmill registered minute changes in gait, direction and walking speed to monitor how ants find their way home in unprecedented detail.

Scientists are the stupidest people on the planet. You wouldn’t think that’s true but it is. It’s not that they’re intellectually stupid. That’s clearly not the case. Most of them have more degrees on the wall than a thermostat (nailed it, I’ve been listening to a lot of Lil Wayne today). It’s more that they don’t use their intelligence in the right way. Like why the fuck are they having ants run on tiny treadmills? That’s not the thought a scientist should be having. That’s something a stoner comes up with at 3am and throws himself into a 15-minute laughing fit. “Hey wouldn’t it be cool if we made a tiny treadmill and made ants run on them? How fun would that be?” And maybe there are real world applications and research they can do that’s beneficial but there HAS TO BE better ways for them to be spending their time. None come to mind right now but I’m not the smart one. I’m not the one who needs to be making the world a better place with my mind. The ants on mini treadmills? That’s something I could come up with. Scientists gotta aim a whole lot higher than ant workouts.