Group decision making makes ants smarter. With humans, on the other hand, sometimes it is better to be alone
Anyone who has dealt with ants on the kitchen counter knows that they are a social creature - it is rare to meet an ant alone. Humans are also social creatures, although some of us definitely prefer to be alone. Ants and humans are also the only examples in nature of creatures that systematically and extensively cooperate in the transport of heavy loads that are much larger than their own dimensions. in the research group of Prof. Ofer Finerman At the Weizmann Institute of Science, they harnessed the points of similarity between ants and people - as well as the obvious differences in dimensions and intellectual abilities - to conduct a fascinating evolutionary competition: which of the creatures will better cope with the maze challenge? The surprising results thatare published today in the scientific journal "Records of the American Academy of Sciences" (PNAS), shed new light on group decision-making and the advantages and disadvantages of individualism versus collectivism.
In order to carry out the competition in a way that would make it possible to compare species from both ends of the food chain, the research team led by Tabia Dreyer decided to translate into the real world the challenge of "transporting the piano" - a classic computational problem in the fields of navigation and robotics that deals with the possible ways to move an object with an unusual shape, say a piano , from point A to B within an environment with obstacles. Instead of a piano, the participants received a large object in the shape of the letter T which they had to lead from side to side inside a rectangular arena that was divided into three cells connected by narrow openings. The scientists created versions of the same maze that were identical in every detail except for their size, so that they would fit the different dimensions of ants and humans and different group sizes. But how were the experimenters recruited? While the humans who volunteered for the study tried to face the challenge simply because they were asked to do so - and perhaps also because of their competitive nature - ants, who are not known for their competitiveness, joined the experiment with enthusiasm simply because they were misled into thinking that the object that had to be moved from one place to another was a juicy piece of food, and the maze was set up like this that the exit from it will be straight into their nest.
The ant chosen to face Homo Spines is the long tentacle runner (Paratrechina longicornis) also known as "crazy ant" due to its supposedly frantic movement. This species of black ants with a size of about 3 mm is common all over the world and in Israel - especially in the coastal plain and in the south - and it is likely that at some point it was hosted in your home as well. The ants faced the challenge of the maze in three different formations - an ant alone, a small group of about seven ants Ants and a large group of about 80 ants. Similarly, the humans tried to solve the riddle in three parallel compositions - a human Alone, a small group of six to nine people and a large group of up to 26 people. To allow as faithful a comparison as possible, the human ensembles were instructed in some cases not to use verbal communication or body gestures, and they even wore masks and sunglasses to hide their mouths and eyes , the human experimenters were instructed to grasp the object exclusively using handles in a manner that simulated the grip of ants; these handles included sensors that measured the The gravity exerted by the participants. In order to achieve significant results, the scientists repeated the experiment a large number of times in each of the types of formations, and then carefully analyzed the performance using videos and advanced tracking devices using computer simulations and based on different physical models of movement in space.
Is it good for man to be alone?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, when faced with the challenge alone, the famous cognitive abilities of humans came to the fore. They (and they) recorded impressive performances, conducted themselves in a calculated and strategic manner - and easily surpassed the faltering performance of the ants who had to face the challenge alone without success (and without their sisters). But in the group formations the picture was already completely different: the transition to group play boosted the abilities of the ants - especially in the larger groups - and they demonstrated performances that were not only infinitely better than those of the individual ants, but in some cases even better than those of humans. The group of ants acted together in a calculated and strategic manner, and they even demonstrated a collective group memory that manifested itself in the ability to maintain a common direction of movement and avoid repeated mistakes. On the other hand, in humans, the transition to group formations did not significantly improve abilities - and in groups where communication was limited, performance even deteriorated significantly compared to individual or group performance. Unlike the strategic thinking that most characterized both the individual contestants and the groups that were allowed to communicate, the contestants in groups with limited communication tended to choose "greedy" solutions - steps that seemed tempting in the short term but were ineffective in the long term - and aligned themselves, according to the researchers, with the "lowest common denominator ".
An ant colony is a family
"An ant colony is actually a family. All the ants in the nest are sisters - and they all share a common interest. It is a very close-knit society where cooperation significantly outweighs competition. That's why an ant nest is sometimes referred to as a 'super-organism' - that is, a kind of living body made up of many" Our research findings confirm this - we have shown that ants working in a group are smarter than the sum its parts," explains Prof. Finerman. "In humans, on the other hand, group formations did not expand the cognitive abilities of the individual. The famous 'wisdom of crowds' - the concept that became popular in the age of social networks - was not reflected in our challenge."
Despite the challenges in cooperation between people, Dr. Ehud Ponio from Prof. Finerman's group in the Department of Physics of Complex Systems at the Institute, Prof. Nir Gov from the Department of Chemical and Biological Physics at the Institute, Dr. Amir Halutz who was also involved in this research At the time a doctoral student in the group of Prof. Gov, and Prof. Amos Korman from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Haifa.
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