Ant colonies behave like neural networks when making decisions
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220722184814.htm
A new study suggests that indeed, ants as a group behave similar to networks of neurons in a brain.
Rockefeller's Daniel Kronauer and postdoctoral associate Asaf Gal developed a new experimental setup to meticulously analyze decision-making in ant colonies. As reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they found that when a colony evacuates due to rising temperatures, its decision is a function of both the magnitude of the heat increase and the size of the ant group.