The digital ants were given only a few simple rules: find an open seat, wait if the path was blocked, ask other ants to move if they were in the way, etc.
But asexual ants of other species either rely on one or a few individuals to lay eggs, or else only the younger ants do it.
His overall aim, he explained, was to distil "the principles by which ants and other animals manipulate complex environments" and bring them to bear in the design of search-and-rescue robotics.
These so-called fairy circles have variously been pinned on the presence of other, poisonous plants, on ants, and even toxic gases rising from below.
Plants that are symbiotic with ants can be found in other parts of the world, especially Central and South America, where there are no elephants, but large herbivores lived before they became extinct.
Or maybe she's too attractive, or too young for you, or too overbearing or too serious or her offspring likes to squash ants and feed them to the other kids.
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Dr Wittlinger, therefore, decided to investigate a century-old hypothesis that desert ants have internal pedometers in other words, they count their steps out, and they count them back.
The regime, says Prof Juergens, also drives wider benefits, with the insects becoming a valuable food resource for a whole range of other animals such as geckos, moles, aardvarks, jackals, spiders, ants and the like.
How the ants have persisted in spite of this threat, or whether they have just been luckier than other attempts to build equal societies, is so far unknown.
Other large herbivores, especially giraffes, will eat the plants, probably because they are not as bothered by the ants.
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