The Müller-Lyer Illusion in Ant Foraging

The Müller-Lyer illusion is a classical geometric illusion in which the apparent (perceived) length of a line depends on whether the line terminates in an arrow tail or arrowhead. This effect may be caused by economic compensation for the gap between the physical stimulus and visual fields. Here, we show that the Müller-Lyer illusion can also be produced by the foraging patterns of garden ants (Lasius niger) and that the pattern obtained can be explained by a simple, asynchronously updated foraging ant model. Our results suggest that the geometric illusion may be a byproduct of the foraging process, in which local interactions underlying efficient exploitation can also give rise to global exploration, and that visual information processing in human could implement similar modulation between local efficient processing and widespread computation.

[1]  R. Gregory,et al.  Distortion of Visual Space as Inappropriate Constancy Scaling , 1963, Nature.

[2]  R. Gregory.  Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing , 1969 .

[3]  L. S. Tsai.  Mueller-Lyer Illusion by the Blind , 1967, Perceptual and motor skills.

[4]  R. Dewar.  Distribution of practice and the Müller-Lyer illusion1 , 1968 .

[5]  R Sekuler,et al.  Explanation of the Müller-Lyer illusion: confusion theory examined. , 1969, Journal of experimental psychology.

[6]  R. Runyon,et al.  Error Increase and Decrease in Minimal Form of Mueller-Lyer Illusion , 1970, Perceptual and motor skills.

[7]  A. Ginsburg.  Psychological Correlates of a Model of the Human Visual System , 1971 .

[8]  L. M. Ward,et al.  The effect of optically induced blur on the magnitude of the Mueller-Lyer illusion , 1976 .

[9]  Frank Restle,et al.  Size of the Mueller-Lyer illusion as a function of its dimensions: Theory and data , 1977 .

[10]  C. B. Rubinstein,et al.  A model of threshold vision incorporating inhomogeneity of the visual field , 1977, Vision Research.

[11]  D Marr,et al.  Theory of edge detection , 1979, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences.

[12]  J. Deneubourg,et al.  Probabilistic behaviour in ants: A strategy of errors? , 1983 .

[13]  C. R. Carlson,et al.  Visual illusions without low spatial frequencies , 1984, Vision Research.

[14]  C Casco,et al.  The location of noisy visual stimuli. , 1985, Canadian journal of psychology.

[15]  B. Libet.  Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action , 1985, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[16]  K. Hamaguchi.  The Relation between the Muller-Lyer Illusion and the Angle Illusion , 1995 .

[17]  David R. Badcock,et al.  Localization of element clusters: Multiple cues , 1996, Vision Research.

[18]  Aleksandr Bulatov,et al.  Geometrical illusions: study and modelling , 1997, Biological Cybernetics.

[19]  J. Deneubourg,et al.  How do ants assess food volume? , 2000, Animal Behaviour.

[20]  T. Poggio,et al.  Neural mechanisms of object recognition , 2002, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[21]  Thomas Serre,et al.  On the Role of Object-Specific Features for Real World Object Recognition in Biological Vision , 2002, Biologically Motivated Computer Vision.

[22]  D. Wegner.  The Illusion of Conscious Will , 2018, The MIT Press.

[23]  Dale Purves,et al.  Range image statistics can explain the anomalous perception of length , 2002, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[24]  J. Deneubourg,et al.  Pheromone trail decay rates on different substrates in the Pharaoh's ant, Monomorium pharaonis , 2003 .

[25]  S. D. Eneubourg.  Pheromone trail decay rates on different substrates in the Pharaoh’s ant, Monomorium pharaonis , 2003 .

[26]  D. Sumpter,et al.  From nonlinearity to optimality: pheromone trail foraging by ants , 2003, Animal Behaviour.

[27]  J. Cowan,et al.  A mathematical theory of visual hallucination patterns , 1979, Biological Cybernetics.

[28]  B. Sparrow,et al.  Vicarious agency: experiencing control over the movements of others. , 2004, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[29]  C. Fermüller,et al.  Uncertainty in visual processes predicts geometrical optical illusions , 2004, Vision Research.

[30]  B. Libet.  Mind Time: The Temporal Factor in Consciousness , 2004 .

[31]  Thomas Serre,et al.  Object recognition with features inspired by visual cortex , 2005, 2005 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR'05).

[32]  J. Deneubourg,et al.  The self-organizing exploratory pattern of the argentine ant , 1990, Journal of Insect Behavior.

[33]  J. Deneubourg,et al.  Modulation of trail laying in the antLasius niger (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) and its role in the collective selection of a food source , 1993, Journal of Insect Behavior.

[34]  Dale Purves,et al.  Natural-scene geometry predicts the perception of angles and line orientation. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[35]  Dale Purves,et al.  The Müller-Lyer illusion explained by the statistics of image-source relationships. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[36]  S. Blakemore,et al.  Intentions, actions, and the self , 2006 .

[37]  Susan Pockett.  The Neuroscience of Movement , 2006 .

[38]  J. Deneubourg,et al.  Self-organized structures in a superorganism: do ants "behave" like molecules? , 2006 .

[39]  Tatjana Seizova-Cajic,et al.  Biases in judgments of separation and orientation of elements belonging to different clusters , 2006, Vision Research.

[40]  Thomas Serre,et al.  Robust Object Recognition with Cortex-Like Mechanisms , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[41]  Aleksandr Bulatov,et al.  Center-of-mass alterations and visual illusion of extent , 2010, Biological Cybernetics.

[42]  Y. Gunji,et al.  Garden ant homing behavior in a maze task based on local visual cues , 2013, Insectes Sociaux.

[43]  Oliver Obst,et al.  The Müller-Lyer Illusion in a Computational Model of Biological Object Recognition , 2013, PloS one.