Ants resort to heuristics when facing relational-learning tasks they cannot solve.

ABSTRACT: We humans sort the world around us into conceptual groups, such as 'the same' or 'different', which facilitates many cognitive tasks. Applying such abstract concepts can improve problem-solving success and is therefore worth the cognitive investment. In this study, we investigated whether ants (Lasius niger) can learn the relational rule of 'the same' or 'different' by training them in an odour match-to-sample test over 48 visits. While ants in the 'different' treatment improved significantly over time, reaching around 65% correct decisions, ants in the 'same' treatment did not. Ants did not seem able to learn such abstract relational concepts, but instead created their own individual strategy to try to solve the problem: some ants decided to 'always go left', others preferred a 'go

SUBMITTER: Oberhauser FB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7575519 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature