Random Thought of the Day

Ok guys. I am about to stir up a very heated debate. While I was showering this morning, I noticed that there were a bunch of ants in my shower tub, diligently walking around in search of food. That image somehow triggered a very interesting question in my head:

Who will win a 100 meter race - The ant or the turtle?

vs

According to this page, ants travel on average about a foot per minute, so that's about .30 meters per minute.

According to this page:

"In a speed test carried out in the Seychelles a male giant tortoise could only cover 15 feet in 43.5 sec (0.23 mph) despite the enticement of a female."

so that's 0.11 meters per second, so that's 6.6 meters per minute (wow, this is faster than I thought)


So in theory, the turtle will easily beat the ant, right? But remember, you will almost rarely have just one ant just walking around. So we have to assume that during the race, this ant racer is accompanied by tens and hundreds of ants in the vicinity.

We also have to assume that the turtle stinks really badly, and hence is quite attractive to the ant(s). I mean c'mon, have you ever seen a turtle that doesn't actually stink? So if both assumptions are true, the ant will end up hollaring all his friends over and start to attack the poor turtle. The turtle will then pull of this amazing stunt by retracting its head and legs into its shell to protect himself. Little does he know that the ants are small enough to penetrate through the shell, and end up eating him up alive.

While all of this is happening, the original ant racer starts to slowly walk towards the finish line and win the race without much pressure... But that can't be true as well, since ants never really walk in a straight line unless it sense something that they want to eat. Since the turtle is just right next to it, the ant cannot help but be forced to keep eating the turtle away, and hence never finish the race.

I conclude that it will be a draw.

Thoughts?