Ants Exhibit Memory-Based Aggression Towards Rivals
- New research from evolutionary biologists at Germany's University of Freiburg shows that ants retain knowledge of hostile encounters with neighboring enemies and act accordingly.
- The study published in Current Biology indicates that ants behave more aggressively towards those that smell of past negative encounters and more calmly towards passive ants.
- Research associate Volker Nehring stated that the study provides evidence that ants learn from their experiences and can hold a grudge.
- The scientists conducted experiments in two phases to determine how ants remember bad experiences, leading to variations in aggression based on past encounters.
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Science Daily
Verve timesEvolutionary biology: Ants can hold a grudge
Evolutionary biologists are investigating the extent to which ants learn from past experiences. After being attacked by ants from a particular nest, ants behave more aggressively towards others from that same nest.
Much is predetermined in the life of an insect colony. This is why a study is surprising: Ants remember who they had trouble with. In other words, they learn from experience.
Even ants may hold grudges
It’s not just humans who have trouble making amends—Earth’s 20 quadrillion ants aren’t quick to forgive, either. Ants primarily rely on their fine-tuned olfactory sense to differentiate between the smell of members of their own family (i.e. safe ants) and ants from other colonies. A familiar scent while out foraging, for example, allows a worker ant to know which nearby ants are there to help, and which may be rivals hunting for the same resourc…
Ants hold grudges, study suggests
A team of evolutionary biologists has demonstrated that ants learn from experience. Led by Dr. Volker Nehring, research associate in the Evolutionary Biology and Animal Ecology group at the University of Freiburg, and doctoral student Mélanie Bey, the team repeatedly confronted ants with competitors from another nest. The test ants remembered the negative experiences they had during these encounters.
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