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05-10-2003, 01:59 PM
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#43 (permalink) |
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Insane
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Not a very quick or practical solution, but it is pretty cool. In Feynman's autobio, he talks about experimenting with ants, so here's how he dealt with his ant problem.
"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 this time I was doing these experiments on the ants, so I thought to myself, "What can I do to stop them fom coming to my larder without killing any ants? No poison; you gotta be humane to the ants!" What I did was this: In preperation, I put a bit of sugar about six or eight inches from their entry poitn ito the room, that they didn't know about Then I made those ferry* things again, and whenever an ant returning with food walked onto my little ferry, I'd carry him over and put him on the sugar. Any ant coming toward the larder that walked onto a ferry I also carried over to the sugar. Eventually the ants found their way from the sugar to their hole, so this new trial was being doubly reinforced, while the old trail was being used less and less. I knew that after half an hour or so the old trail would dry up, and in an hour they were out of my larder. I didn't wash the floor; I didn't do anything but ferry ants." *the ferry things were simply folded strips of paper |
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| Tags |
| ant, cheap, control, method |
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