Ants communicate through the hormone pheromone. This hormone helps them to follow the trail of ants, or know the coordination in teamwork while carrying back food.

To know how each ant acts during a session of teamwork, a group of scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, decided to observe each of their movements by tagging the ants with numbers. Each of the ants’ movements were scrutinised as to if they were pushing, pulling or tugging the most.

The conclusion that showed up was that if any of ants did a different of movement than the team, the food would not move. Sometimes, an ant might not be able to follow the movement of others, the cause of which could be that, the food would block their antennas.

“So everyone has to be a conformist. One ant grabs the object and she feels it is going to the left and doesn’t want to fight the other ants, and so she also pulls to the left,” Feinerman says.

A single, lone ant could have a much better idea and direction to get home. That ant would step up and guide the group back on course, when they were in risk of going astray. But this leader is not permanent, and soon forgets the the trail itself; another leader emerges at that point.

Alex Wild, the curator of entomology at the University of Texas at Austin as well as an ant expert, tells us that different species of ants follow different foraging pattern. The fire ant will fight and snatch the food of others away, while the longhorn ants will find the food themselves and carry it away.

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Author:Technology Blog