According to the British Daily Mail, it is well known that ants are animals that can carry several times the weight of the body, and at the same time, they can also walk backwards in their weight-bearing state, at present, scientists' latest research has discovered how ants navigate when they walk backwards, and it turns out that they walk backwards by measuring each step.
While ants typically use their jawbones to bite food and carry food back to their nests in the most convenient path, they walk backwards when carrying larger volumes of food. Researchers at the University of Ulm in Germany point out that ants can walk backwards as freely as they can walk forward. They used biscuits to attract the long-legged desert ants in their nests (cataglyphis fortis), and they placed the ants in a long metal pipe parallel to the ground that led directly to the direction they returned to the nest.
They then observed that the long-legged desert ants began to carry 10 times the weight of their body biscuits, they photographed the ants carrying the biscuits to the nest, and soon noticed that they used a "tripod" backward walking method, after scientists found that when the ants walked backwards, the legs resembled a "tripod", 3 legs remained on the ground, and the other 3 legs swung in front.
What's more, when ants arrive at a location in a metal pipe not far from the nest, they will turn around and travel backwards to carry food, as if they know how far the nest is. The ants walked forward at roughly the same speed, but the researchers noticed that when a tripod walking pattern appeared, the pace changed accordingly. Researcher Sarah Pfeffer said: "They increase the static stability of the body by swinging the legs quickly and using 3 legs to fix them to the ground like a tripod. ”
In fact, ants use each stride and measure each stride size to complete the backward walk. The team believes that the ants navigate backwards by measuring stride size because they are able to accurately measure the distance they walk, or even the distance each leg moves separately. What puzzled scientists, however, was that when all the visual and odor cues that located the nest were in the wrong direction, the ants could still walk backwards in the right direction. The latest study is currently published in the recently published Journal of Experimental Biology.
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