from the this-might-explain-the-drama-at-family-gatherings dept.
https://phys.org/news/2025-01-ants-grudges.html
A team of evolutionary biologists has demonstrated that ants learn from experience. Led by Dr. Volker Nehring, research associate in the Evolutionary Biology and Animal Ecology group at the University of Freiburg, and doctoral student Mélanie Bey, the team repeatedly confronted ants with competitors from another nest. The test ants remembered the negative experiences they had during these encounters.
When they encountered ants from a nest they had previously experienced as aggressive, they behaved more aggressively toward them than toward ants from nests unknown to them. Ants that encountered members of a nest from which they had previously only encountered passive ants were less aggressive. The results have been published in the journal Current Biology.
Ants use odors to distinguish between members of their own nest and those from other nests. Each nest has its own specific scent. Previous studies have already shown that ants behave aggressively towards their nearest neighbors in particular.
They are especially likely to open their mandibles and bite, or spray acid and kill their competitors. They are less likely to carry out such aggressive maneuvers against nests that are further away from their own. Until now, it was unclear why this is the case. Nehring's team has now discovered that ants remember the smell of attackers. This is why they are more aggressive when confronted with competitors from nests they are familiar with.
The scientists conducted an experiment in two phases. In the first phase, ants gained various experiences: One group encountered ants from their own nest, the second group encountered aggressive ants from a rival nest A, and the third group encountered aggressive ants from rival nest B. A total of five encounters took place on consecutive days, with each encounter lasting one minute.
In the subsequent test phase, the researchers examined how the ants from the different groups behaved when they encountered competitors from nest A. The ants that had already been confronted by conspecifics from this nest in the first phase behaved significantly more aggressively than those from the other two groups.
Journal Reference: Mélanie Bey et al, Associative learning of non-nestmate cues improves enemy recognition in ants, Current Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.11.054
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Friday January 10, @03:18PM (4 children)
How will they react if I go to the hardware store and ask for some aunt killer?
The age of men is over. The time of the Orc has come.
(Score: 3, Touché) by higuita on Friday January 10, @04:59PM
i hope you sleep well, or else you may wake up being carried to their nest to be eaten
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday January 10, @05:43PM
The only reason humans don't hold grudges against ants is that they've carried out their revenge with poison, a newspaper, or a foot.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Friday January 10, @06:23PM
They will come to first partition into bite-sized chunks and then to carry off said chunks of your aunt.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Vocal Minority on Saturday January 11, @04:14AM
Sooooo...you're going to curry favour with the ants by killing your aunt, against whom they have cause to hold a grudge? (sorry it's all I got)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Frosty Piss on Friday January 10, @05:51PM
"Hold grudges"? Or retain some memory of that which is dangerous? Humans like to put human feelings on non-human things that do not have human feelings.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Frosty Piss on Friday January 10, @08:05PM
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_IV_(1974_film) [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Frosty Piss on Friday January 10, @09:17PM (1 child)
The title of the original study paper says nothing about "grudges"...
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Vocal Minority on Saturday January 11, @04:07AM
I'm completely surprised that journalists would misrepresent a paper to make it seem more sexy /s