Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Ants teach

This is cool.

Ants Are First Non-Humans to Teach, Study Says

...they raced along a tabletop foraging for food -- and then, remarkably, returned to guide others.

Time and again, followers trailed behind leaders, darting this way and that along the route, presumably to memorize landmarks. Once a follower got its bearings, it tapped the leader with its antennae, prompting the lesson to literally proceed to the next step.

The ants were only looking for food, but the researchers said the careful way the leaders led followers -- thereby turning them into leaders in their own right -- marked the Temnothorax albipennis ant as the very first example of a non-human animal exhibiting teaching behavior.

I once read, but have not been able to verify, that if you look at a species brain size in proportion to the rest of their body that ants have a bigger brain than any other speices, including humans.

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