We continue to learn new information every day about ants, which make up the most advanced communities of the animal kingdom. A new study, recently published in PNAS, is the kind that makes us fall in love with ants again. research, ant colonies works like neural networks revealed.

The team behind this surprising study investigated when and how ant colonies evacuate their nests when temperatures get too high. After a while, the team saw that the ants decided to leave the nest as a group. In other words, ants since neurons work like a whole brainThey acted as a system and worked in such a way that everything was in harmony. They calculated the benefits and costs of their decision.

As their numbers increased, so did their temperature threshold:

The subject setup used in the study included a temperature-controlled nest, a surveillance camera, and ants marked with dots. The colony consisting of 36 worker ants and 18 larvae With an increase of 34 degrees Celsius taken out of the nest together. As the number of colony members increased, so did the temperature threshold that would force them to leave this nest. This level at 200 ant colonies It was 36 degrees Celsius.

Through mathematical modelling, the team found that the ants’ collective sensory threshold isn’t just indicative of each ant’s individual preferences. not averagebetween these two factors. how to balance proven. But the study also raised a question mark that had to be resolved later: Why did the temperature threshold increase in individual indecisive ants as the number of colony members increased? Why did the ants want to stay in the nest when the numbers increased? The only hypothesis at the moment is that the number is increasing. It also made the job of changing the nest even more difficult.