Ants living in the deserts of Africa themselves create landmarks in the region so as not to get lost and find their home. German scientists came to this conclusion after finding that if they got lost, one in five ants could stay in the desert forever, according to a study published in the journal Current Biology.
Cataglyphis fortis desert ants living in the salt pans of North Africa have long attracted the attention of scientists with their ability to find their way home, using the sun as a compass and counting their own steps to measure distance. traveled, to make long journeys. “In addition, they have the ability to learn and use visual and olfactory cues. We believe that these extremely harsh living conditions have evolved to lead to the development of a navigation system of unparalleled precision,” says Marilia Freyr from the Institute for Chemical Ecology of the Max Planck Society (Germany), who has discovered new, unusual navigational abilities of these ants.
Previously, scientists noticed that near the entrances to ant nests located in the center of salt lakes, in which there are no visual landmarks, there are high mounds. At the same time, in nests located on the edge of salt marshes, where shrubs grow, these mounds are lower and barely noticeable. Scientists have speculated that ants create these mounds as visual cues to help them find their way home after hunting.
“It’s always hard to tell whether animals are creating something for a purpose or not. The high mounds in the center of salt marshes may be a side effect of the nature of the soil or wind conditions. Either way, the main thrust of our work was the idea of ​​removing the mounds and providing some nests with artificial landmarks, and some not, and seeing what happens,” explained Markus Knaden, co-author of the work.
With the help of GPS, the scientists tracked the ants in search of food and returning home. “We have seen that desert ants can travel much longer distances than previously reported. The greatest distance for an individual animal was more than 2 km. In addition, we have seen a surprisingly high mortality rate. About 20% of foraging ants did not find their way home after particularly long journeys and died in front of us, which explains the extremely high selection pressure for better orientation,” Freyr explained.
To follow the behavior of the ants, when only a few meters remained at the nest, the scientists applied a special grid to the surface. This allowed us to understand that ants really use their native mounds as visual reference points. If the mounds were removed, fewer ants found their way back home, while the relatives left in the nest immediately began building new ones. At the same time, if scientists put small black cylinders instead of an embankment, the ants did not build new embankments – new objects served as an excellent guide.
Since the older ants feed and the younger ones build the nest, the scientists believe that there must be an exchange of information about their landmark between the two nest groups. “According to one of the versions, the ants in the nest somehow notice that fewer getters come home, and therefore the construction work on an embankment begins at the entrance,” the author suggested.
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