The ants that taught Napoleon how to win amaze scientists with a new discovery
The team focused its research on an ant of the Cataglyphis fortis species, known in Arabic as the "Desert Ant".
A team of scientists was astonished by their discovery of what was not known about the ant before now, which is that it knows the path to return to its colony when it searches outside it for food, from special landmarks and signs that it builds itself on the roads, according to a study published in the American Journal of Current Biology, its details in its current issue, and blow up previous hypotheses. , that the ant groups use the sun for their movements, or count their steps to measure the distances they have traveled, or they may rely on the sense of smell to feel the way of their movement.
The team focused its research on an ant of the Cataglyphis fortis species, known in Arabic as the "desert ant", which is spread near flat, largely featureless salt pans, in Tunisia in particular, and usually travels long distances from the colony in search of supplies, although the ground temperature is below Its feet are severe, and may reach 60 centigrade. However, when you find something to eat or preserve, you return it in an easy and fast way, which has always aroused the curiosity of scientists and puzzled them.
The team also noticed that the ants design their colonies in a way that suits their geographical location. In Tunisia, where it was in the middle of salinas, there were no visible features in it. “Mounds appeared at the entrances to the colonies, some of them up to 40 centimeters high at the entrance,” according to what a scientist from the Max Planck Institute wrote in Berlin, Dr. Markus Knaden is an evolutionary biologist who has been studying desert ants for 25 years.
Scientists found that the ants take from the blocks of salt in the Tunisian salinas landmarks that guide them to their colony when they return to it
Dr. Knaden also said: "It is always difficult to know whether an animal is doing something on purpose or not," adding in what I read, "Al Arabiya.net" on the website of the scientific journal, "The hills of high colonies in the middle of the salinas can be a side effect of differences in soil structure or wind conditions" and to see if the differences were related to navigation, he and his colleagues tracked the ants as their groups left their colonies.
Napoleon ant
As for Dr. Marilia Freire from the German Institute itself, she wrote: “We noticed that desert ants are able to travel much greater distances than previously reported, as we found them traveling more than two kilometers per day. However, we also noticed an unexpected increase in the death rate, while not 20% of the ants searching outside the colony for food find their way to it after long distances, and they died before our eyes. But if scientists remove the mounds built by the ants in an environment devoid of landmarks and signs, fewer ants find their right way, and start rebuilding the landmarks as quickly as possible.
In another experiment, scientists placed artificial landmarks, including small black cylinders, near the entrances to the colony, then removed the hills that the ants had built. The ants did not build other new landmarks, because they found that the cylinders were sufficient to make them landmarks on the road.
We find in history, outside of what the magazine published, what supports the scholars’ new theory, in a story about Napoleon Bonaparte, summarizing it that he fought a battle in which he lost many of his men and his equipment, so he went looking for a solution at a time when he saw an ant crawling looking for its livelihood, so he put his finger To prevent her from reaching where she wanted, but she did not give up, and every time she changed her path and did not despair, and suddenly he left her and hurried and gathered his army again and attacked his opponent without a path and won, just like the ant.
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