A new study found that ants perform better at solving puzzles in a group than humans, especially when the humans are not allowed to speak with one another.
Longhorn crazy ants can't move in a straight line but can beat humans at navigating a complex puzzle in a group. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Comparing cooperative geometric puzzle solving in ants versus humans, presented groups of ants and humans with scaled versions of the same puzzle. Both groups had to figure out how to get a T-shaped object through a hole in a wall.
Longhorn crazy ants, so named because they move erratically rather than in a straight line like most ants, are excellent problem-solvers, as seen in this video.
To level the playing field, researchers made some adjustments.
This kind of puzzle is hard for ants because their pheromone-based communication doesn't account for the kind of geometry needed to get the object through the doors. To make the experiments even more comparable, the team also took away the humans' communication in some of the trials by making them wear sunglasses and masks and forbidding talking and gestures. So the people, like the ants, had to work together without language, relying on the forces generated by their fellow participants to figure out how to move the T-shaped piece.
While groups of ants were much better at solving the puzzle than individual ants, this was not the case for the humans. Not only did groups of humans perform worse than individual humans, but they also performed worse than the ants.
According to Science:
The researchers posit that, in the absence of the ability to discuss and debate, individuals attempt to reach a consensus quickly rather than fully assessing the problem. This "groupthink," they suggest, leads people toward fruitless "greedy" efforts where they directly pull the T toward the gaps in the wall, rather than the less obvious, correct solution of pulling the object into the space between first. Whereas the ants "excel in cooperation," they write, humans need to be able to talk through their reasoning to avoid simply going with what they think the crowd wants.
Previously: Ants perform surgical amputations on other ants
