Workers ants and queens sing equally

2009/03/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Zoologia

Myrmica schenki ants sonally differentiate queen ants and workers. To this conclusion comes a group of researchers from the University of Oxford analyzing the behavior of ants. The sound is produced by rubbing an appendix of the ants in the abdomen against some tufts and, as the researchers have seen, the workers and the queen do not sound the same, since the distance between the ridges is different in each other. For upon hearing the sound of the queen the workers' ants were more attentive than upon hearing the sound of other workers. In addition, they have seen that a parasite of ants manages to imitate the sound of the queen so that the workers take care of her as queen.