New research shows ants able to discern difference between threat levels
Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - 09:01
in Biology & Nature
(PhysOrg.com) -- In an interesting study designed to determine how well ants are able to gauge a threat, Inon Scharf and his colleagues at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, have shown that even simple ants are able to clearly distinguish between serious threats and those that arent so dire. In their paper, published on Ethology, the team found that a species of forest ant, Temnothorax longispinosus, are able to tell on sight if an invader is a serious threat, or just a mild one, and to react more stringently when the stakes are higher.
