Moving MountainsScientists in Israel have discovered how ants work together to move big chunks of food back to their nests.

Scientists in Israel have discovered how ants work together to move big chunks of food back to their nests.

13:36 30 July 2015

Scientists in Israel have discovered how ants co-operate to move big chunk of food back to their nests by analysing videos of the animals carrying oversized food items, including Cheerios. The study, which focused on very common species known as longhorn crazy ant, found that while a large team of ants does the heavy lifting, a small number of “scouts” intervene and steer for short periods.

 

Dr Ofer Feinerman, a physicist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot and the paper’s senior author, said: "The group is tuned to be maximally sensitive to the leader ants.”

 

"This leader that comes along, she doesn't have to introduce herself, she doesn't have to be stronger than the rest - she just has to pull in the correct direction.”

 

"The only communication in the system is the forces that they feel through the object."

 

To test out their models, Dr Feinerman and his colleagues gave the ants much bigger objects that they would normally shift.

 

"The prediction that the model gave us is that we can play with this mix of conformism and non-conformism," he said. "If you move something huge, you need many, many more ants. And then the force that each ant feels through the object is much stronger. So... all the ants feel a stronger urge to act as conformists."