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which acidifies their blood and damages their nervous system, or by injuring their surface, exposing them to infection. These ants were identified by being marked with a dot of coloured paint. Over the following five weeks, the marked ants began foraging away from the colony earlier and more often than their untreated sisters, suggesting that ants do not switch tasks based merely on their age, but assess their own life expectancy more directly. Moreover, the age at which CO2-treated ants began foraging depended on how badly harmed they were, with especially short-lived ants starting to forage soonest (Animal Behaviour, DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.06.005). Ants with injured skins did not sho... and take on riskier tasks as they feel their days ebbing away.Ha! That's great! That's what I've been planning to do when I get old: skydiving, kayaking, exploring, scuba diving, etc. I don't really want to live much past 70. I wonder if the characteristic was developed through an ant equivalent of experience. I read some where that with communal insects the colony could be considered an organism, with individuals performing the function of cells I'm reminded of skin cells, where the cells are formed, and rise to the surface as they are replaced, forming the barrier between us and the outside world, then shed when they are no longer useful. I'm sure as we develop our develop our definitions of life, some examples will barely have an analogy, while we will satisfy ourselves by describing them as unique. ants have a mid-life crisis I don't really want to live much past 70.Let me know how you feel about that when you reach 69.99 years old. I wonder if they pine for a Ferrari then, SJS? |
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