Can ants be lazy?
Photo: Jeff Kubina
Scientists have noticed that ants tend to specialize in jobs within their colonies. Biologist Anna Dornhaus at University of Arizona wanted to know if this makes ants more efficient, or less. EarthSky spoke to Dornhaus.
In her lab, Anna Dornhaus studied rock ants. She put them through a series of experiments to figure out how they do work.
In one experiment, Dornhaus forced the entire colony to move to a new artificial nest. There were certain ants that specialized in carrying the larvae – that’s the only job they did. But there were others that would carry larvae, and also did other jobs, at other times. When she compared the two, Dornhaus found that the ants that specialized were not doing their job any faster or better than the other ants.
Basically, ants that specialize aren’t any more efficient than ants that do every job.
And when the specialized ants don’t have a job to accomplish, they don’t do anything. Over 70% of the nest is not active at any one time.
So what’s happening? Are the ants just lazy?
Not exactly. Dornhaus figures there must be a benefit to this behavior – we just don’t know what it is.
