Ants are social insects that live in colonies. Individual ants perform specific tasks for the colony, like supplying food, cleaning the nest, defending the colony, etc. There’s no ‘control room’ telling which ant what to do, yet they seem to know exactly what to do and when.
Consider the foragers – worker ants that bring food into the colony. The amount of food they carry perfectly matches the colony’s total hunger. How do they figure this? Scientists have puzzled over this question for some time. According to a new study, the trick might be in the way other ants eat the food the foragers carry.
While the ants accomplish complicated tasks, they use simple rules to decide what to do at each step. When they carry more food, they simply move deeper into the nest; when they’re carrying less than a certain amount, they leave to look for more food.
