Why do the ants go back and forth to the nest, how did they do it?

Have you ever noticed an ant colony when it was feeding? Little insects will spare their nests whatever they find and eat. If the ant finds a crumb, it can grab its jaws tightly and spread the spoils straight toward the nest.

But if the ant is luckier, it will find something really big, a piece of popcorn or a roll, for example. At this time, the ant needs the help of one or more other ants.

Keep an eye out for these ants, some of which go ahead often use their jaws to drag the bait back, and so they have to go backwards . There is no ant that screams the directions for those ants. But interestingly, they still seem to find their way back to the nest.

The question is why? How did they look at the road?

The ants still seem to see the way back to the nest when they go back.

Previously, when studying ants, scientists believed that they needed to see something in front of them to recognize a familiar position, similar to the way the junglers marked trees. they passed.

In addition, some studies have found that ants know how to use the sun's sun angle to calculate the path. It counts the number of steps it takes to determine the fastest path to the goal, and remembers the feeling at every turn and corner so that the path is not forgotten.

But how the ants go back when they can also find their way back to the nest, no one knows. Occasionally, you'll see an ant drop its bait and look back - an activity known as " peeking " - after which it will pick up the bait again and spare it for long distances to the meters.

In the world of ants, such a peek is worth as long as you turn your head back to look once, then have to go back and forth continuously for 400m.

Sebastian Schwarz, an animal behavioral researcher at Paul Sabatier University, is very curious about this action. " We want to find out if the ants see anything while they go backwards ," he said.

Together with his colleagues, Schwarz chose to study Spanish desert ants (Cataglyphis velox). They performed a strange experiment on them. Initially, Schwarz selected an ant nest and placed a trough nearby for a while. The goal is to train the ants to remember the path from the nest to there and back.

They then abducted some ants near the mouth of the nest, then placed it at a location far from home with a giant piece of cookie. The piece has a lot of butter and sugar, the goal is to attract the ant, causing it to pull the piece back to the nest while going backwards.

When you see how ants move in their natural habitat, you will be deeply impressed by the skills they show.

Result: The ants were trapped. While they dragged the cookie to the nest, the scientists observed their peeping behavior. On the 8 meter long road, they saw the ants only need to peek exactly once, when it has reached nearly 6 meters, equivalent to ¾ of the distance.

After that, Schwarz and his colleagues put up a small challenge. This time, they secretly change the scenery around the ants that are pulling prey, adding to the strange mountains, are black nylon bags, and have tarpaulins along the path of the ants.

As expected, when the new sites were added, the ants had to look back twice to the average distance, every 3.2 meters. This result is a clear evidence that visual memory plays an important role in helping ants determine the path they must take.

" These are very interesting behavioral experiments ," says Pauline Fleischmann, a neuroscientist at Julius Maximilian University. " When you see how ants move in their natural habitat, you will be deeply impressed by the skills they show ."

The eyes of ants are very wide viewing angle, they have a close vision of 360 degrees, while humans can only see at 120 degrees in front of you. Schwarz said that the ants are capable of receiving visual information from all four sides, including the back when they leave the nest. These visual information is then reused to guide them upon return.

Continuing to use experiments to analyze the behavior of Spanish desert ants, Schwarz created a model that shows which cases the ants merely rely on sight to find their way, and which ones Other information can be used including the sun's angle or self-counting.

In the future, Schwarz said he will add new experiments to complete the ant navigation model. A number of experiments will be performed on blindfolded ants. Schwarz paints the ants in the eye to temporarily block their view, to find out if they can find their way back to the nest and how.

Meanwhile, some other ants will be placed on a treadmill. Schwarz built around it screens that show the path and moving scenery to put the ant into a virtual reality. This way, scientists will not spend much time tracking ants in the desert anymore, but can observe their behavior right in their laboratory.

The new study is published in the open journal platform bioRxiv.

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