[{"command":"openDialog","selector":"#drupal-modal","settings":null,"data":"\u003Cdiv id=\u0022republish_modal_form\u0022\u003E\u003Cform class=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form ecl-form\u0022 data-drupal-selector=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form\u0022 action=\u0022\/it\/article\/modal\/7012\u0022 method=\u0022post\u0022 id=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form\u0022 accept-charset=\u0022UTF-8\u0022\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHorizon articles can be republished for free under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.\u003C\/p\u003E\n      \u003Cp\u003EYou must give appropriate credit. We ask you to do this by:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n      1) Using the original journalist\u0027s byline\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n      2) Linking back to our original story\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n      3) Using the following text in the footer: This article was originally published in \u003Ca href=\u0027#\u0027\u003EHorizon, the EU Research and Innovation magazine\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n      \u003Cp\u003ESee our full republication guidelines \u003Ca href=\u0027\/horizon-magazine\/republish-our-stories\u0027\u003Ehere\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n      \u003Cp\u003EHTML for this article, including the attribution and page view counter, is below:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\u0022js-form-item form-item js-form-type-textarea form-item-body-content js-form-item-body-content ecl-form-group ecl-form-group--text-area form-no-label ecl-u-mv-m\u0022\u003E\n        \n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n  \u003Ctextarea data-drupal-selector=\u0022edit-body-content\u0022 aria-describedby=\u0022edit-body-content--description\u0022 id=\u0022edit-body-content\u0022 name=\u0022body_content\u0022 rows=\u00225\u0022 cols=\u002260\u0022 class=\u0022form-textarea ecl-text-area\u0022\u003E\u003Ch2\u003EStudying ant cooperation is revealing how brains work together\u003C\/h2\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhat you probably didn\u2019t realise, however, is just how important this ability is to our understanding of not only insect brains, but our own brains as well. How ants work together and navigate their environment has important implications for group cognition and even autonomous technologies like self-driving cars, and our knowledge of this ability is growing faster than ever.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMany groups of scientists around the world are now working on insect cognition, striving to understand exactly what it is inside their tiny brains that makes them such adept collaborators. And just like inquisitive children, they are watching as these ants leave and return to their nest with impressive dexterity.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECollaborative\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDr Ofer Feinerman from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel is leading a project called \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/cordis.europa.eu\/project\/rcn\/213445\/factsheet\/en\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 rel=\u0022noopener noreferrer\u0022\u003EANTSolve\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to study how ants work together to return food to their nests. Together with his team, he is investigating this type of collaborative behaviour to get a better understanding of collective cognition.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018When you group things together, ants or cells, biological entities or birds, what can you get more cognitively than the individual?\u2019 he said. \u2018This is the driving question\u2026Can it be that you take many individuals and get something that\u2019s in a way smarter than a single individual?\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETo find out, Dr Feinerman and his team have been busy performing thousands of experiments on ant nests on their campus. Specifically they have been observing longhorn crazy ants, which despite the name are naturally fearful of other ants and thus tend to work together as much as possible. Setting up cameras and placing food near nests, the team have been watching as a sole ant first finds the food, then alerts her friends to come and help.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018Slowly ants will accumulate around this large food item,\u2019 he said. \u2018When there\u2019s enough of them, they\u2019ll start moving together. It\u2019s a cooperative effort. All of them together have enough muscle strength to move it.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETo get a better understanding of this process, the team have also been placing mazes made of sheets of plastic near the nest, which the ants must traverse to find the food and then return home. This is intended to simulate leaves and rocks or other objects that have obscured their path, to see what is the most difficult maze they can solve together.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cfigure role=\u0022group\u0022 class=\u0022@alignleft@\u0022\u003E\n\u003Cimg alt=\u0022Non-carrying ants clear pebbles from their comrades\u2019 anticipated transport path. Image Credit - Dr Ehud Fonio\u0022 height=\u00221046\u0022 src=\u0022\/research-and-innovation\/sites\/default\/files\/hm\/IMCEUpload\/antmill.jpg\u0022 title=\u0022Non-carrying ants clear pebbles from their comrades\u2019 anticipated transport path. Image Credit - Dr Ehud Fonio\u0022 width=\u00221500\u0022\u003E\n\u003Cfigcaption class=\u0022italic mb-4\u0022\u003ENon-carrying ants clear pebbles from their comrades\u2019 anticipated transport path. Image Credit - Dr Ehud Fonio\u003C\/figcaption\u003E\n\u003C\/figure\u003E\n\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe team have grander ambitions, too. They are devising a system using a rod and pivot to actively communicate with the ants \u2013 as the ants push on the rod, the researchers apply a tiny force to tell them which direction to go. Using this, the team can communicate with a single ant or with a whole group, and see how they respond.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEarly results from the research suggest that non-carrying ants play a role in the transport process, such as clearing pebbles from the anticipated path the carrying ants will use. And the applications from this research are vast. It includes things like using robots to move items within a warehouse, or even how humans can work together in terms of leadership, conformism and how hierarchies form.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018Almost everything in biology is cooperative,\u2019 said Dr Feinerman. \u2018So after we understand this one system, then you can think to generalise it to other parts of biology including groups of humans. Since the ants have worked together like this for more than 100 million years, we may have something to learn from them.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EMemory\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhile the ANTSolve project has been investigating group cognition, Dr Antoine Wystrach from the University of Toulouse in France is looking at a different type of insect cognition, namely how ants are able to navigate their environment. He is the project coordinator for \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/cordis.europa.eu\/project\/rcn\/212128\/factsheet\/en\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 rel=\u0022noopener noreferrer\u0022\u003EEMERG-ANT\u003C\/a\u003E, a project which has devised an intricate virtual reality system to study the movement of ants, which is indistinguishable to the ants from their real world.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDr Wystrach\u2019s experimental setup involves placing an extremely light ball in a cup, and then causing it to levitate with a burst of air. Using a piece of string, an ant is lowered onto the ball so that its legs are just touching it. Then, a spherical screen surrounding the ant displays a virtual reconstruction of the natural environment near its nest. As the ant moves, the image displayed also moves, making the ant think it is navigating in its natural habitat.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cblockquote class=\u0022text-center text-blue font-bold text-2xl w-full lg:w-1\/2 border-2 border-blue p-12 my-8 lg:m-12 lg:-ml-16 float-left\u0022\u003E\n  \u003Cspan class=\u0022text-5xl rotate-180\u0022\u003E\u201c\u003C\/span\u003E\n  \u003Cp class=\u0022font-serif italic\u0022\u003E\u2018Ants are very famous for their collective intelligence.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\n  \u003Cfooter\u003E\n    \u003Ccite class=\u0022not-italic font-normal text-sm text-black\u0022\u003EDr Antoine Wystrach, University of Toulouse, France\u003C\/cite\u003E\n  \u003C\/footer\u003E\n\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\n\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018We want to try to understand memory and learning and the visual part of long routes,\u2019 said Dr Wystrach. \u2018How they control their motor behaviour, all that is really cool. So the idea is to have them running in a virtual environment on an airflow treadmill. When the ant is moving, we\u2019re changing what we display in the video. So she\u2019s basically moving through a virtual world.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESuch an experiment would be considerably more difficult in a natural environment, where ants can cover hundreds of metres in a single day. This technique allows the researchers to watch ants over extremely long routes, and see how and where they move, how they move around obstacles, and so on.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMore importantly, the experiment allows them to discover how the ants can find their way home. By changing the video on the screen they can place the ants at different locations around their nest, and watch as they recalculate their route home.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018It\u2019s really surprising how good these ants are,\u2019 said Dr Wystrach. \u2018You can put them anywhere along a familiar route, and they will recognise a good route direction.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThis research could help us get a better understanding of how insect brains retain information by observing how ants learn their route in the virtual environment. And this has applications for things like self-driving cars, or cleaning robots like Roombas we use in our homes, which have to autonomously find their way around obstacles to reach a particular destination. Together with projects like ANTSolve, it will tell us more about how insect brains work \u2013 and even our own brains \u2013 than ever before.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018Ants are very famous for their collective intelligence,\u2019 said Dr Wystrach. \u2018This project, like many others, now starts to see the power of linking ecology and natural behaviour with mechanisms in neuroscience,\u2019 he added, noting that previous research on insect neurobiology had helped them hypothesise how their ants might behave.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EThe research in this article was funded by the EU. 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