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.
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
The time scientists made ants walk on stilts… for science (obviously!) by Cameron Duke
Everybody Falls. Here's the Right Way to Do It by Ashley Hamer
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/why-scientists-made-ants-walk-on-stilts
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why people have illusions of control; that time scientists made ants walk on stilts; and how to reduce your chances of getting hurt when you fall.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
If you’ve ever felt like you successfully wished a traffic light into turning green or played a slot machine just right to get a jackpot, this story is for you. No, you didn’t have control over the light or the slot machine, but there’s a reason you thought you did. You’re not delusional — you might just be extra sensitive to your environment.
Studies suggest that it’s actually really common to feel like you have control over the uncontrollable. For example, in a 1979 experiment, scientists wired a button to a lightbulb and had volunteers judge how much influence they had over the lightbulb turning on and off. But the button did nothing. They weren’t in control of the lightbulb at all. But the volunteers still thought they could influence when the bulb turned on and off.
Stories like this can make us feel like people just disregard evidence that’s right in front of them. But that might not be the case. Instead, a new study says we might develop illusions of control because we’re very sensitive to evidence.
For the study, researchers asked volunteers to come to a lab and wave their hands over a motion tracker to move a dot on a computer screen. Sometimes they were in control of the virtual dot, and sometimes the computer was in control. So it was kind of like the lightbulb experiment, but updated for modern times. Participants had to tell the researchers whether they thought they were in control of the dot or not.
Just like in the lightbulb experiment, people experienced strong illusions of control. Even when the dot was being controlled by the computer, they felt like they were moving the dot with their own hands.
But here’s where the dot experiment went further than the lightbulb one. In this experiment, researchers tracked how the participants moved. They noticed that people were really sensitive to the moments when the computer just happened to move the dot at the same time they moved their hands. So they felt the most control when that correspondence was strongest.
That suggests that these illusions may come about because of how carefully we track our relationship to the world around us. We might just be picking up on correlations that occur by chance. And if that’s true, it’s a sign that people are sensitive, not that we’re deluded.
It’s counterintuitive, but the research suggests that human beings have a pretty outstanding understanding of the relationships between our actions and the world around us.
Ants that live in the desert have to deal with a unique problem. They can travel far from their nests in search of food, but then they have to find their way back. Considering that the landscape is basically featureless, that’s no small task. So how do they do it? They count their steps! And how do we know this? Because scientists once made ants walk on tiny stilts.
Desert ants of the genus Cataglyphis make the ants in your kitchen look like they have it easy. These ants are Mad Max-style desert scavengers that scour the dunes to feed on other insects that couldn’t take the heat.
How the ants manage to navigate in the desert landscape has perplexed biologists for more than a century. They can cover great distances across bleak landscapes for food, and they always seem to make it back to the nest without the tools other ants have at their disposal. Pheromone trails would dry too quickly to be useful in this environment, and there are literally no navigational landmarks besides the sun.
Enter the “pedometer hypothesis.” This hypothesis was actually posed way back in 1904, but it wasn’t effectively tested until 2006. Essentially, this hypothesis predicts that the ants can find their way home by counting their steps.
To test this, scientists trained ants to walk in a straight line from their nest to a feeder. Once they got used to this, the scientists equipped some of the ants with tiny stilts. And guess what? The unaltered ants made their way back to the nest, but the ants on stilts strode right past it every time. They had made the correct number of steps, but failed to account for their longer legs. Less cute is the fact that the researchers also shortened the legs of some of the ants. Sure enough, that made them stop walking far short of their goal.
This is just one part of a navigational technique scientists call “path integration.” When the ant leaves its nest, it takes a meandering path, but when it goes home, it cuts a straight line back. So while evidence suggests ants count their steps to find home, exactly how they know the right number of steps is still a mystery.
In the end, given how short their legs are and how many legs they have, that’s… a lot of counting for an insect. Somebody give these ants a Fitbit!
It doesn’t matter if you’re an 80-year-old grandmother or a 20-year-old gymnast — everybody falls sometimes. Especially during the winter, am I right? And while falling can be dangerous, there are things you can do to reduce your chance of injury. So let’s talk about the right way to fall.
First, here’s why you want to learn how to fall correctly. Falls account for 7.9 million injury-related emergency-room visits a year in the United States. They’re the second leading cause of death from unintentional injuries, right behind car accidents. And we’re not talking about cliffs or bridges here — these are your garden variety fall, whether that’s a trip, a slip, or a result of losing consciousness. So if you can make falls less dangerous, why wouldn’t you?
Here’s how you can. First, it’s important to remember that it's not the fall, but the collision with the ground that hurts. And that means that if you take time during the fall to position your body in a way that risks the least injury, you could walk away unscathed — or at least less injured than you would be otherwise. This is common knowledge in occupations where falling correctly is a part of the job — think police and firefighters, martial artists, stunt people, and professional wrestlers. Here are a few tips:
Number one: don't fight it. Fall like a little kid. Relax your body and hit the ground with soft muscles and pliable joints. That will help you absorb the force with your whole body, rather than an elbow or a hip.
Number two: land on your fleshiest parts. If you can adjust your body to land on the parts that will absorb the fall instead of break on impact, you'll be better off. Part of that involves turning your body as you fall, in a gradual rolling motion.
Number three: tuck your head and don't use your hands to break your fall. If you fall backward, tuck your head into your chest and aim for the widest part of your back, breathing out as you hit the ground.
Finally, of course, prevention is the best medicine. Fix any slippery or trip-prone areas in and around your home, and wear appropriate footwear. Don't look at your phone as you walk and keep your hands out of your pockets. With the right preparation, hopefully you won’t be needing these tips anytime soon.
Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with
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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Kelsey Donk, Cameron Duke, and Ashley Hamer, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Scriptwriting was by Cody Gough and Sonja Hodgen. Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!