US scientists: Ants behave like neural network

The US Rockefeller University researchers have demonstrated that ants make the decision to evacuate the colony when the temperature rises by acting like a neural network.

The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, Gazeta.ru reports.

The authors of the article created a special system to test the reaction of the ant colony, in which scientists could precisely control the temperature increase. It turned out that the decision to evacuate or not depends on two factors, namely, the size of the colony and temperature. Animals use these parameters to maximise benefit by minimising risk and efforts. A neural network also acts this way.

Colonies consisting of 36 ants and 18 larvae evacuated their nests when the temperature reached 34 degrees Celsius. When the scientists tested colonies consisting of 10-200 ants, the temperature required to make a decision to evacuate increased. So, colonies consisting of 200 ants evacuated their nests when the temperature increased above 36 degrees. The evacuation of big colonies requires a lot of work.

Some ants are unaware of the size of their colony, but can communicate with each other by passing on pheromones. The more of them in the air are, the bigger the colony size is. The team of biologists plans to continue their research by testing their findings on more parameters, including the level of pheromones.