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More Fun Than Fun: Experienced Ants Lead and Teach, Naïve Ants Follow and Learn

Gadagkar, R (2020) More Fun Than Fun: Experienced Ants Lead and Teach, Naïve Ants Follow and Learn. In: The Wire Science .

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Official URL: https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/ants-intel...

Abstract

Maj. Richard William George Hingston (1887-1966) was an Irish doctor who served in the Indian Medical Service from 1910 to 1927, and returned to India on military duty from 1939 to 1946. A passionate naturalist, he spent all his spare time collecting and studying the Indian fauna, mostly insects and spiders. Based on his studies in the Himalayan valley of Hazara (now in Pakistan), Hingston published A Naturalist in Himalaya (1920). Recording what is perhaps his most famous observation, made on the common Indian ant Camponotus sericeus, he wrote in his Problems of Instinct and Intelligence (1928): This ant nests on the ground and goes up trees in search of food. Its plan of communication is very simple, and, being so simple, is highly instructive. All that happens is that one ant leads another to the place where spoil has been found. One ant discover spoil. It returns to the nest, finds a comrade and leads it to the required place. The two go off over the ground. The leader keeps in front; the led ant follows. Number two keeps in number one’s footsteps, and repeatedly touches its tail. The leader moves particularly slowly in order not to lose connection with its follower. If number two happens to get out of touch, then the leader halts and waits until number two regains its place. Harvard University professor and arguably the world’s most famous ant biologist Edward O. Wilson rediscovered this behaviour while studying another ant, Cardiocondyla venustula, in Puerto Rico in 1959. Wilson christened this behaviour tandem running – simply because it involves the movement of a pair of ants running in tandem, not unlike a tandem bicycle. In most species, however, experienced ants guide their naïve sisters to new sources of food or a new place to build their nest by marking their path with volatile chemicals called trail pheromones. And yet, many ants, especially those that live in small colonies, communicate without trail pheromones. Instead, they use tandem-running to guide their naïve sisters to new locations.

Item Type: Editorials/Short Communications
Publication: The Wire Science
Department/Centre: Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Ecological Sciences
Date Deposited: 19 Mar 2021 09:36
Last Modified: 01 Jun 2022 11:42
URI: https://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/68417

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