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Science Quickly

Ants Use Celestial Cues to Travel in Reverse

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.41.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2017

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The six-legged savants appear to use celestial cues and three forms of memory, as they blaze a trail back to the nest. Karen Hopkin reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, Deadpool here. We're very excited to be joining you, but we should set the table correctly.

0:05.4

We're mostly going to make enemies with Disney and make a lot of jokes at Hughes' expense.

0:09.4

Come again.

0:10.4

So sit back, relax, while we travel to a place where grown men and women walk around in tights and act like it's not a giant cultural cry for help.

0:19.0

Because this is cinema. Shaggy! Oh my God! This is Cinema Cinema.

0:23.0

Sugar.

0:24.0

Oh my God.

0:25.0

Marvel Studios Deadpool in Wolverine in Cinemas Thursday, July 25th.

0:30.0

This is Scientific Americans, 60 Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkins.

0:35.0

I'm Karen Hopkins. Got a minute.

0:38.0

Next time you need directions, maybe ask an ant,

0:41.0

because these clever little critters are such masters of navigation

0:44.1

that some can find their way home whether they're walking forward, backward, or

0:48.3

sideways. That's according to a study in the journal Current Biology.

0:51.7

Ants often travel long distances, well for them,

0:55.0

when they're searching for food to bring back to their nests.

0:58.0

And their built-in GPS appears to function just fine

1:01.0

even when they wind up having to travel in reverse because

1:04.0

they're dragging a huge morsel. But how do these backward bugs know where

1:07.7

they're going? To find out, researchers went to Spain to mess with some desert

1:12.0

ants. They found an active nest and surrounded

1:14.7

it with barriers that forced the foraging ants to follow a particular path back home.

...

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