Instinct or Cleverness

更新：2023-11-22

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[00:01.48]Lesson 54
[00:04.04]Instinct or cleverness?
[00:13.23]Was the writer successful in protecting his peach tree? Why not?
[00:20.96]We have been brought up to fear insects.
[00:24.13]We regard them as unnecessary creatures that do more harm than good.
[00:29.16]We continually wage war on them, for they contaminate our food, carry diseases, or devour our crops.
[00:36.88]They sting or bite without provocation;
[00:40.03]they fly uninvited into our rooms on summer nights, or beat against our lighted windows.
[00:46.97]We live in dread not only of unpleasant insects like spiders or wasps, but of quite harmless ones like moths.
[00:55.99]Reading about them increases our understanding without dispelling our fears.
[01:01.29]Knowing that the industrious ant lives in a highly organized society
[01:05.99]does nothing to prevent us from being filled with revulsion when we find hordes of them crawling over a carefully prepared picnic lunch.
[01:15.38]No matter how much we like honey,
[01:17.65]or how much we have read about the uncanny sense of direction which bees possess, we have a horror of being stung.
[01:26.20]Most of our fears are unreasonable, but they are impossible to erase.
[01:31.89]At the same time, however, insects are strangely fascinating.
[01:36.61]We enjoy reading about them, especially when we find that, like the praying mantis, they lead perfectly horrible lives.
[01:45.54]We enjoy staring at them, entranced as they go about their business, unaware (we hope) of our presence.
[01:53.50]Who has not stood in awe at the sight of a spider pouncing on a fly,
[01:58.29]or a column of ants triumphantly bearing home an enormous dead beetle?
[02:04.32]Last summer I spent days in the garden watching thousands of ants crawling up the trunk of my prize peach tree.
[02:12.41]The tree has grown against a warm wall on a sheltered side of the house.
[02:17.01]I am especially proud of it,
[02:19.17]not only because it has survived several severe winters, but because it occasionally produces luscious peaches.
[02:27.34]During the summer, I noticed that the leaves of the tree were beginning to wither.
[02:32.32]Clusters of tiny insects called aphides were to be found on the underside of the leaves.
[02:39.24]They were visited by a large colony of ants which obtained a sort of honey from them.
[02:44.92]I immediately embarked on an experiment which
[02:47.61]even though it failed to get rid of the ants kept me fascinated for twenty-four hours.
[02:53.72]I bound the base of the tree with sticky tape, making it impossible for the ants to reach the aphides.
[03:00.40]The tape was so sticky that they did not dare to cross it.
[03:04.14]For a long time, I watched them scurrying around the base of the tree in bewilderment.
[03:09.82]I even went out at midnight with a torch and noted with satisfaction (and surprise)
[03:15.58]that the ants were still swarming around the sticky tape without being able to do anything about it.
[03:21.88]I got up early next morning hoping to find that the ants had given up in despair.
[03:27.52]Instead, I saw that they had discovered a new route.
[03:31.95]They were climbing up the wall of the house and then on to the leaves of the tree.
[03:37.42]I realized sadly that I had been completely defeated by their ingenuity.
[03:42.85]The ants had been quick to find an answer to my thoroughly unscientific methods!