Language Behaviour in Ants

Experimental evidence of information transmission in ants is considered, from early experimental results to the general experimental paradigm elaborated later in the long-term “binary tree” study. Methodological details are presented, as well as the results of experiments in which ants were confronted with a rather complex life-or-death task: they could obtain food only in a “binary tree” maze by means of distant homing, lacking a possibility to use odour trails. Only scouting ants appeared to be capable of remembering sequences of turns towards the target and sharing this information with members of their constant team of foragers. A new battery of tests revealed characteristic features of scouts, such as intelligence, exploratory activity, bravery without self-sacrifice, high frequency of switching between activities and faithful interest to the variety of stimuli.

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