Hive minds have the antidote to poison
On their own, individual ants hardly seem very clever. Working together, however, they can easily outwit silly humans like us. Researchers are now looking to the interactions of ants within their colonies for clues on how people can successfully work together to save lives in a time of crisis.
Ant poison works on the assumption that a scout ant will find it and summon others to help carry it back to the nest for their ant mates to feast upon. Unfortunately a new discovery made by biologists at the University of the West of England indicates some species of ant might have a few tricks up their sleeves when it comes to dealing with potential poisons.
By housing several colonies of the ant Temnothorax albipennis in artificial nests, the researchers were able to observe their behaviour when they went without food for an extended period of time. Faced with a reduced food supply, a percentage of the colony’s workers would stay in the nest to chow on whatever the scouts would carry home. Before you think this is a little unfair, they would happily vomit the food up again to share with their fellow ants.
Honey ants in the Australian outback are a good example of ants who act as food storage units. The swollen abdomens of some members of the colony contain a sugary solution that is fed to other workers when times are tough.
In effect, these living pantries would be testing the food for poison. If a bad food source killed them, it wouldn’t be passed on to the rest of the colony, sparing them from contamination. Additionally, food from different sources was being mixed together in their digestive system, diluting potential toxins and reducing the risk of death. These ‘storage ants’ could also help keep the queen and her nursery alive during famines.
Mapping the interactions between individual ants could provide us with clues on how to create simple rules capable of producing complex outcomes. Distributing food and aide during catastrophes like the recent Haitian earthquake could in the future be based on the efforts of the humble ant.
