A forager ant, Cataglyphis velox, from Seville, Spain. (Image by Michael Mangan and & Hugh Pastoll)
Ants know exactly where they came from, even if they travelled there by somewhat untraditional (for humans, anyway) means, like crawling backward or sideways. A new study found that ants can tell the difference between the direction their body is facing and the direction of travel. These findings challenge the notion that insects operate solely through simple, stimulus-based behaviour. Researchers say the ants’ memorization of the path independent of their body orientation hints at least three kinds of working memory.
Authors:
Sebastian Schwarz, Michael Mangan, Jochen Zeil, Barbara Webb, Antoine Wystrach
Corresponding author:
Antoine Wystrach, University of Edinburgh, Email: antoine.wystrach@gmail.com, Tel: +33(0)561556441,+33(0)769159963
Original paper published in Current Biology on January 19, 2017.
