Although ants are also social animals, they have been found to be more effective in group living than humans. In puzzle-solving competitions, when group transitions occurred, ants demonstrated excellent organization, while humans experienced increased conflict, resulting in lower success rates.
A research team led by Ofer Feinerman from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel noted on the 24th in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that "ants can achieve much better results when they form collective intelligence compared to humans."
Ants are social animals like humans. They are divided into roles: the egg-laying queen ant, the male ants that only mate, and the worker ants that gather food and care for the queen ant and the eggs, thereby practicing thorough division of labor.
To investigate how the cooperative abilities of ants and humans differ, the research team conducted an experiment where they had to remove T-shaped blocks through a narrow passage. Grouping together to move blocks between two small passages requires complex thinking processes and cooperation. The researchers examined how quickly ants and humans could extract the blocks in the same environment.
First, the ants and humans were divided into individuals, small groups, and large groups to solve the same problem. Ants solved the puzzle as 7 in small groups and 80 in large groups, while humans participated in small groups of 6 to 9 and large groups of 16 to 26. The humans were allowed to communicate freely in one scenario and had communication banned in another to determine the impact of communication on group behavior.
The experiment results showed that while humans were mostly successful at solving puzzles alone, their success rates dropped as the number of participants increased. When communication among participants was blocked, the drop was even more significant. About 80% of humans succeeded in extracting blocks within 15 attempts when trying alone, but in large groups where communication was blocked, the success rate fell to about 40% within 15 attempts.
In contrast, while ants overall had a significantly lower success rate compared to humans, their success rate tended to increase as the number of participants grew. When a single ant solved a puzzle, the success rate was considerably low, but as the number of ants in both small and large groups increased, the success rate also rose.
The research team analyzed movement patterns to find the reasons behind the differences between ants and humans. It was found that ants moved along walls during group actions, seeking optimal efficient pathways, and created "collective memory" by sharing this with their fellow ants. Collective memory refers to the phenomenon where social members have shared experiences. Ants consistently moved the blocks based on collective memory and displayed problem-solving behavior.
However, humans displayed a 'greedy algorithm' in the early stages of problem-solving, prioritizing individual choices over seeking opinions from others. The greedy algorithm refers to actions that result in the best choice from the current state. While this might be the optimal choice for an individual, it led to inefficient movements in a group, thereby decreasing problem-solving abilities. Additionally, when communication was allowed, they often managed to resolve issues through consensus after multiple failures, but when communication was prohibited, unresolved conflicts significantly decreased their problem-solving capacity.
The research team explained that ants are strong in group decisions because their cognitive system is simple, making cooperation easier. Professor Feinerman stated, "Ants have a simple cognitive system that uses pheromones (hormones released by insects into the air). A simple cognitive system is suitable for scale expansion, but the complex cognitive systems of humans seem to require much more communication to cooperate."
Reference materials
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2414274121