Hardworking and never tired, the ants have another talent that has been less known so far. They are able to orient themselves thanks to the sun and their memory. This is what emerges from new research conducted at the University of Edinburgh
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
Hardworking and never tired, the ants they have another talent that has been less known until now. I'm able to orient yourself thanks to the sun and their memory. This is what emerges from new research conducted at the University of Edinburgh.
Previous studies had already shown that ants find their way on their way by comparing what appears in front of them with the visual memories of the journey already made. But when they walk backwards they ask for help from the sun.
It seems incredible but it is the position of our star that guides these little creatures in their daily comings and goings. Endowed with an extraordinary sense of direction, ants know how to maintain a direction of travel regardless of their body position in space.
A skill that is anything but trivial. In other words, they know how to distinguish information about the road ahead from information about how they are physically oriented, a bit as if we were trying to make our way home by walking backwards.
Sometimes, ants walk this way to avoid dropping the weights they are carrying. In doing so, they exploit their visual memory and correct their direction of travel if they are "off course".
"Our main finding is that ants can decouple their direction of travel from their body orientation," said Dr Antoine Wystrach of the University of Edinburgh and CNRS in Paris.
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Scientists have shown that backward-walking ants sometimes look behind them to check their surroundings, and use this information to set a trajectory relative to the position of the sun. In this way, the insects can keep their way to the burrows.
The research was conducted in collaboration with scientists from the University of Lincoln, Australian National University and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).
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The study was published in Current Biology.
Francesca Mancuso
