University of Zurich researcher Markus Knaden studies how ants avoid losing their way back home when they're out foraging. Apparently, they have to go back to the nest every so often to "reset" their navigation system or else guidance errors will occur. The insights from Knaden's experiments have already been applied to improve autonomous robot orientation. From a Societ of Experimental Biology press release:
Ants that return from foraging journeys can use landmarks to find their way home, but in addition they have an internal backup system that allows them to create straight shortcuts back to the nest even when the outbound part of the forage run was very winding. This backup system is called the 'path integrator' and constantly reassesses the ant's position using an internal compass and measure of distance travelled. Knaden and his colleagues hypothesised that because the path integrator is a function of the ant's brain, it is prone to accumulate mistakes with time. That is, unless it is regularly reset to the original error-free template; which is exactly what the researchers have found…
"We think that it must be the specific behaviour of entering the nest and releasing the food crumb that is necessary to reset the path integrator", says Knaden.
