The BBC reports that a team of Swiss/German have discovered that ants have an internal pedometer of sorts to calculate the steps they need to take to leave and return to the nest.
The creatures have the remarkable ability to return to their nest using a direct route rather than retracing their outbound path.
To perform this feat, the ants need to judge directions and distances. But while they rely on the sky for orientation, their means for measuring distance had remained a mystery.
To investigate, scientists from the University of Ulm, Germany, and the University of Zurich, Switzerland, set some ants off on a foraging trip along a straight tunnel, but once they had reached the food their legs were manipulated to either make them longer by adding stilts, or shorter by partially amputating them.
The ants were then returned to the same spot to begin their homeward-bound journey. However, the researchers discovered the ants with longer legs overshot the nest entrance, while those with the shortened legs undershot it.
We continue to learn more amazing things about animals on a daily basis. The scientists plan new studies to learn more about how the ants "calculate" the amount of steps they need to take.
