''Cataglyphis fortis'' is a species of

ant Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22 ...

in the subfamily

Formicinae The Formicinae are a subfamily within the Formicidae containing ants of moderate evolutionary development. Formicines retain some primitive features, such as the presence of cocoons around pupae, the presence of ocelli in workers, and little ...

. Found in

Tunisia ) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , ...

, the ants inhabit salt pans where they forage dead

arthropod Arthropods (, (gen. ποδός)) are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton, a Segmentation (biology), segmented body, and paired jointed appendages. Arthropods form the phylum Arthropoda. They are distinguished by their jointed limbs and Arth ...

Navigation skills and internal pedometer

Measuring the sun's angle

This ant ventures far from its burrow in the Sahara Desert, which has almost no identifiable features. While venturing out it periodically takes measurements of its angle in respect to the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

. By doing this the ant can venture far from its nest in search of food. Because of the blistering heat, it can only do this for about 3–5 minutes/day (the hottest time of the day, when all its predators are in hiding from the sun). When the ant finds a dead insect it then looks at the sun and because of its periodic references to the sun's angle it knows exactly what the shortest route back to the nest is. Researchers from the

Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology The Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology is located on Beutenberg Campus in Jena, Germany. It was founded in March 1996 and is one of 80 institutes of the Max Planck Society (Max Planck Gesellschaft). Chemical ecology examines the role of che ...

have also verified that desert microhabitats have unique odour signatures that can guide the ants back to the nest. This skill, which has also been observed in the behavior of foraging honey

bee Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey. Bees are a monophyly, monophyletic lineage within the ...

s, is elemental to the survival of this species of ant under the harsh conditions in which it lives. This behavior allows ''Cataglyphis'' to travel farther from its nest than any other creature that lives in the Sahara, with respect to size.

Pedometer

The ant appears to use an internal

pedometer A pedometer, or step-counter, is a device, usually portable and electronic or electromechanical, that counts each step a person takes by detecting the motion of the person's hands or hips. Because the distance of each person's step varies, an i ...

to count its steps in a harsh environment where odors quickly vanish, enabling it to "count back" to its nest. When stilts were glued on to the ants legs, they overshot the distance of their nests, while ants with cut legs traveled short of their nest. It's suspected that while the ants unlikely have the brainpower to literally count steps, they are somehow doing it intuitively.

Food memory

''Cataglyphis fortis'' is capable, as well, of memorizing up to 14 different food odors which seemingly exceeds its requirements for survival. Workers from a colony were presented with several different food odors and were observed to remember them for up to 25 days following their initial introduction to the odor, which exceeds the average expected lifespan of about six days before they tend to be killed by predators. Researchers were consequentially stunned that ants who had reached over four times the average expected age could still remember what they learned. Puzzled at this, they reasoned that it makes sense due to food being unpredictable, and the ants may come across several different food items in a single foraging run while nest scents tend to remain the same and will not drastically change during any given ant's lifetime.

References

External links

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q13457185 Formicinae Hymenoptera of Africa Insects of North Africa Insects described in 1902 Taxa named by Auguste Forel