# Why don't ants get brain-addled when they stop so suddenly? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 18, 2008, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-ants-get-brain-addled-when-they-stop-so-suddenly/456974 "2008-07-18T17:53:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2008, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-ants-get-brain-addled-when-they-stop-so-suddenly/456974/21 "2008-07-18T22:56:12Z")
It has almost no inertia. As you note, it has very small mass, and it’s moving very slowly. So if m is small and v is small, m\*v is going to be really really small. ---
**Author:** ![SharkB8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/977dab/32.png) [@SharkB8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SharkB8)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2008, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-ants-get-brain-addled-when-they-stop-so-suddenly/456974/22 "2008-07-18T23:28:24Z")
[QUOTE=Lemur866] It has almost no inertia. As you note, it has very small mass, and it’s moving very slowly. So if m is small and v is small, m\*v is going to be really really small. [/QUOTE] And…really, really cute! ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2008, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-ants-get-brain-addled-when-they-stop-so-suddenly/456974/23 "2008-07-18T23:29:26Z")
[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright] Sure, but the amount of energy required is reduced in proportion to its size. [/QUOTE] Not all natural phenomena scale in direct proportion to one another - if an ant were scaled up magically to human size, it wouldn’t even be able to lift its own body off the ground. Take an idealised cubic container - scale it up in every way so that it’s twice the size - that is, twice as wide across as before - if your grow-ray is working properly, the container’s wall thickness is also now doubled. but the contained volume is _eight times_ what it was previously. Keep doing that and obviously, you quickly reach a point where the walls lack the structural strength to contain the contents, or even to support their own weight. This sort of thing happens in many different ways - it’s the reason that surface tension can pull a raindrop into a spherical shape, but not a whole bucketful of water. It’s the reason ants can carry many multiples of their own body weight, but humans or elephants can’t. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2008, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-ants-get-brain-addled-when-they-stop-so-suddenly/456974/24 "2008-07-19T00:19:37Z")
[QUOTE=tdn] For another, I don’t think they have brains in the traditional sense that mammals do. They don’t have tiny little brains inside of tiny little skulls. [/QUOTE] Well, they don’t have skulls, but they do have tiny little brains in their tiny little heads. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2008, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-ants-get-brain-addled-when-they-stop-so-suddenly/456974/25 "2008-07-19T04:06:36Z")
[QUOTE=Annie-Xmas] Pick up ant. Put in model airplane Put plane on very fast moving treadmill. Stop treadmill suddenly. Check out ant’s brain. [/QUOTE] PROFIT! ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2008, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-ants-get-brain-addled-when-they-stop-so-suddenly/456974/26 "2008-07-19T05:38:04Z")
[QUOTE=Fish] It would also be 23,887,872 times its previous mass (because it expanded 288 times in three dimensions). Such an ant who previously weighed 1/20 of an ounce would now weigh 37 tons, requiring a cool million newtons of force to move and 1,998 horsepower to do the quarter-mile. Those silly numbers illustrate the danger of trying to scale human-size physics to ant-size. Relative speed aside, ants have much less mass. [/QUOTE] I don’t think a regular house ant is anywhere close to 1/20th of an ounce. A weight of [.25 milligrams](http://www.jstor.org/pss/3495627) would be closer to the mark. ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2008, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-ants-get-brain-addled-when-they-stop-so-suddenly/456974/27 "2008-07-19T07:36:31Z")
Still. The example is illustrative; scaling up the linear (one-dimensional) speed may not apply when you also have to scale up the (three-dimensional) mass. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2008, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-ants-get-brain-addled-when-they-stop-so-suddenly/456974/28 "2008-07-19T16:50:02Z")
[QUOTE=Fish] Still. The example is illustrative; scaling up the linear (one-dimensional) speed may not apply when you also have to scale up the (three-dimensional) mass. [/QUOTE] Point taken. ---
**Author:** ![Tyrrell\_McAllister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tyrrell_mcallister/32/16772_2.png) [@Tyrrell\_McAllister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tyrrell_McAllister)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2008, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-ants-get-brain-addled-when-they-stop-so-suddenly/456974/29 "2008-07-19T18:09:36Z")
[QUOTE=tdn] Send it to the Marianas Trench for 20 minutes. That ought to addle its little ganglion good! [/QUOTE] Didn’t that already happen? ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2008, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-ants-get-brain-addled-when-they-stop-so-suddenly/456974/30 "2008-07-19T20:30:46Z")
[QUOTE=Tyrrell McAllister] Didn’t that already happen? [/QUOTE] Once. ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2008, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-ants-get-brain-addled-when-they-stop-so-suddenly/456974/31 "2008-07-19T22:10:03Z")
Isn’t this happening? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-ants-get-brain-addled-when-they-stop-so-suddenly/456974.md?page=1)