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Can you teach ants to fear?
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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This is a beautiful and clever question, and the answer is: Yes.
Ants are able to learn to avoid places where something bad happens. In the following study, people tried to teach ants not to follow their own pheromones with positive meaning by giving them electric shocks (evil crazy scientists). They were able to teach them to ignore the signals (not to avoid them altogether though). It's kind of a big deal, because these pheromones are normally telling them to follow them, so for the ants not to obey that is a big behavioral change.
It also tells us that electric shocks are efficient agaist ants ๐
https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/224/11/jeb242454/269004/Hard-limits-to-cognitive-flexibility-ants-can