When Associating Numbers of Elements With Their Time Period of Occurrence, the Ants Take Account of the Characteristics of the Elements

Abstract

After having shown that the workers of the ant Myrmica sabuleti can associate amounts of elements with their time periods of occurrence and knowing that these ants do not take into account the characteristics of elements when counting but take them into account when adding the elements, we wondered if, when associating amounts with their time periods of occurrence, these ants take or do not take account of the characteristics of the elements. Working on six colonies and using three kinds of visual cues during training and these three cues modified as for their size (small, large), color (blue, yellow) or shape (triangle, star) during testing, we revealed that, when associating amounts of elements with their time periods of occurrence, the ants take into account the characteristics of the elements. We checked if, without changing the elements characteristics, the ants effectively associated the perceived amounts (1 – 3, 2 – 4, 3 -5) of elements (squares, blue circles, triangles) with their time periods of occurrence (8 – 19 o’clock, 20 – 7 o’clock), and they did. We also made a complementary experiment on newly collected colonies using a slightly different protocol, and we obtained identical results which leaded to the same conclusion. So, the present work confirmed our previous results and solved the last asked question on the subject.   

Summary of Newly Found Ants’ Cognitive Abilities, and Their Occurrence in Humans

“…The ants were observed and counted: they duly followed the 'correct' sequence. These results are illustrated in Figure 4 and details can be found in Cammaerts & Cammaerts (2023). Above the black line: conditioned ants correctly responded to the even (A, B) or odd (C, D) number, whatever the presented numbers, perceiving thus the parity of the numbers.…”

“…According to the performed experiments, the results were reported as numbers of counted ants, proportions of correct responses, conditioning scores, sums or means, and seldom ratio. Each test made in the course of each experiment was submitted to a statistical analysis adapted to the recorded data (e.g., non -parametric Wilcoxon test, Chi-Square test, GLMM analysis) and what was done was each time detailed in the eight previous publications (Cammaerts, 2023;Cammaerts & Cammaerts, 2022b, c, d, e, f;2023;unpublished data).…”

“…The materials and methods used for conducting the summarized works are described in detail in each of authors' eight publications (Cammaerts, 2023;Cammaerts & Cammaerts, 2022b, c, d, e, f;2023;unpublished data). They are specific to each work, and are here only very briefly recalled.…”

“…Experimental design used to train and test the ants for examining skills they may detain, and briefly related in this paper. The design of each experiment somewhat differed according to the skill examined, and each design is schematically drawn in each of the eight corresponding publications (see Cammaerts, 2023;Cammaerts & Cammaerts, 2022b, c, d, e, f;2023;unpublished data).…”

“…Every result was statistically studied and found significant. More details are reported in the papers relative to this topic (Cammaerts, 2023;Cammaerts & Cammaerts, 2022b, c, d). A last experiment was performed on three pairs of colonies, training the ants of each pair using a different kind of dot (black square, blue circle, black triangle) and two different numbers of these dots (1 and 3, 2 and 4, 3 and 5), the smaller number being presented from 8 to 19 o'clock, the larger one from 20 to 7 o'clock.…”