# What Precedent is there for this Ant Behavior? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 14, 2007, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-precedent-is-there-for-this-ant-behavior/392266 "2007-02-14T21:29:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2017, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-precedent-is-there-for-this-ant-behavior/392266/21 "2017-01-09T20:59:21Z")
> [@FoieGrasIsEvil](#): > > I had no AC for several days in 90 plus degree heat in my house. But now you know how to dig dead bugs out of the relay and get the A/C back on! ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2017, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-precedent-is-there-for-this-ant-behavior/392266/22 "2017-01-09T21:53:02Z")
I’ve seen several articles recently that show ants building bridges out of living bodies for various reasons. Living _ant_ bodies, that is. I’ll see if I can look up a cite. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2017, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-precedent-is-there-for-this-ant-behavior/392266/23 "2017-01-09T22:09:54Z")
[Here’s](http://phys.org/news/2015-11-ants-bridges-bodies-video.html) one. > [@](#): > > Ants of E. hamatum automatically form living bridges without any oversight from a “lead” ant, the researchers report in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences. The action of each individual coalesces into a group unit that can adapt to the terrain and also operates by a clear cost-benefit ratio. The ants will create a path over an open space up to the point when too many workers are being diverted from collecting food and prey. > > “These ants are performing a collective computation. At the level of the entire colony, they’re saying they can afford this many ants locked up in this bridge, but no more than that,” said co-first author Matthew Lutz, a graduate student in Princeton’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. > > “There’s no single ant overseeing the decision, they’re making that calculation as a colony,” Lutz said. “Thinking about this cost-benefit framework might be a new insight that can be applied to other animal structures that people haven’t thought of before.” ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2017, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-precedent-is-there-for-this-ant-behavior/392266/24 "2017-01-09T22:26:20Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Bumpity. > > I ran across this thread a while back, and thought of it again when I saw [this](https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/01/09/selective-tool-use-in-ants/) article. That is a fascinating article. The behavior described in the op seems credible to me. From the above article we know that individual ants can choose to pick up an object to drop in the vicinity of a food source, and will drop objects in something perceived as a sticky food source. They can determine (no question not as individuals but by group optimization behavior) which is the object that succeeds better, as above. Many glue traps are scented (either peanut butter or sweet). Ant pathways are optimized by [stimergy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy), following pheromone traces. They can coordinate [complex building behaviors](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4747701/) in this manner. _An_ ant using the dropping an object in a perceived food source had a small increased chance of succeeding to get to the lizard and back to the colony than an ant not using that technique. All it took was one ant doing that. If that ant’s behavior was then followed, and replicated as that was the ant coming back and forth with food, then others would follow its path of behaviors including the picking up of the object and dropping it and a bridge becomes built. Coordinated behavior solving the problem, intelligence, emerges. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2017, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-precedent-is-there-for-this-ant-behavior/392266/25 "2017-01-09T22:42:54Z")
When growing up in Sierra Leone, my sister and I took a good deal of interest in the doings of ants. We would spend ages watching them manovre a sugar cube up a wall and out of a window. We woul catch the common black one that didn’t sting (much) and drop them in a bunck of the nast red ones - or vice versa. We would mess with marching columns that went across footpaths with ‘soldier’ ants forming a double line while the workers scurried along between them. Our kitchen table stood in four tins filled with disinfectant which was changed frequently. Sometimes enough ants would die in the stuff to make a bridge and there would be swarms of them on the table. The falling in the disinfectant thing was easy to understand. Even the almost sisyphean task of pushing a sugar cube up a wall was probably just trial and error. But how did they ‘know’ to post guards on the marching column where it crossed bare earth? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2017, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-precedent-is-there-for-this-ant-behavior/392266/26 "2017-01-09T23:17:38Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > Our kitchen table stood in four tins filled with disinfectant which was changed frequently. Sometimes enough ants would die in the stuff to make a bridge and there would be swarms of them on the table. I used to keep [a hummingbird feeder](http://s313.photobucket.com/user/darrengarrison/media/nature/hummer_yellowjacket.jpg.html?sort=3&o=108) hanging by a wire from a nail in the overhang of my covered front porch. The fire ants would discover the wire and make their trails to the feeder, and I would slather the wire with hot sauce and petroleum jelly and move the feeder from spot to spot, and they would always defeat my efforts sooner or later. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-precedent-is-there-for-this-ant-behavior/392266.md?page=1)