[Avery Andrews 931005.1330]
As Rick says, when you see an organism actually controlling for one
thing, but it's something else that actually matters selectively (pheromone
distribution vs. presence of a nest), there has got to be a significant
connection between the two.
But there is also a lot of interest in the discrepancies, I'd say.
Frogs lunge at nearby flies, but also jetliners in the far distance
and birds in the middle distance (according to Arbib, at a talk here
a few years ago). `perceived wiggling black spot' corresponds to
presence of bug with a significant but not not perfect degree of
accuracy. This is presumably a compromise between the expense of
running better fly detectors, and the costs incurred by not having
them (wasted energy, increased exposure to predators - the latter than
main cost, would be my guess).
This kind of thing strikes me as obviously interesting, but it can't
be studied if we don't analyse the world from our point of view as
well as the frog's.
Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au