Granny knot its possible use tying the necks of grain sacks. When attempting to tie a reef knot (square knot), it is easy to produce a granny knot accidentally. This is dangerous because the granny knot can slip when heavily loaded. A tightened granny knot can also jam and is often more difficult to untie than the reef knot. It is better to tie a reef knot in nearly all circumstances. One way to distinguish them is that in the reef knot each loop passes completely over, or completely under (not through) the neck of the other. The reef knot is commonly
Mutation (knot theory) endpoints of the tangle. There is also a rotation that results from composition of the reflections. A mutation replaces the original tangle by a tangle given by any of these operations. The result will always be a knot and is called a mutant of "K". Mutants can be difficult to distinguish as they have a number of the same invariants. They have the same hyperbolic volume (by a result of Ruberman), and have the same HOMFLY polynomials. Mutation (knot theory) In the mathematical field of knot theory, a mutation is an operation on a knot that can produce different knots.