Ants, Cataglyphis cursor, use precisely directed rescue behavior to free entrapped relatives.

ABSTRACT: Although helping behavior is ubiquitous throughout the animal kingdom, actual rescue activity is particularly rare. Nonetheless, here we report the first experimental evidence that ants, Cataglyphis cursor, use precisely directed rescue behavior to free entrapped victims; equally important, they carefully discriminate between individuals in distress, offering aid only to nestmates. Our experiments simulate a natural situation, which we often observed in the field when collecting Catagyphis ants, causing sand to collapse in the process. Using a novel experimental technique that binds victims experimentally, we observed the behavior of separate, randomly chosen groups of 5 C. cursor nestmates under one of six conditions. In five of these conditions, a test stimulus (the "victim") was ensnare

SUBMITTER: Nowbahari E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2719796 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature