For those of you who thought that ants are nothing like The Borg, think again. Scientists have discovered that ants share a collective memory
within a colony that allows any member of that colony to recognise an enemy from another ant’s experience.
The scientists likened the sense to football fans recognising each other by the colour of their scarves and telling their friends which scarf colour is the enemy. We liken it to The Borg because we are just cool that way. Also, collective memory seems more Borg than football fan to us, do let us know what you think.
The scientists discovered this new information by engineering ‘ant wars’ – introducing one colony to another and then instigating an invasion. It was discovered that if an ant from the colony that was being invaded had already encountered the invading force then the defence by that ant’s colony was more aggressive than that of an invasion of unknown ants.
The morality of ‘ant wars’ was not addressed in the report. If any ants are reading this report we hope that this will make you think twice before attacking what you see as invaders, they could have been thrown at you against their will by some random scientist. In the meanwhile we at Newsnibbles will be conducting similar experiments with our interns. We will let you know how it pans out.
Read the full report here.
