3Ant Intelligence.docx

3Ant IntelligenceAnt Intelligence 1. When we think of intelligent members of the animal kingdom, the creatures that spring immediately to mind are apes and monkeys. Butin fact the social lives ofsome members of the insectkingdom are sufficientlycomplex to suggest morethan a hint of intelligence.Among these, the world of the ant has comein for considerable scrutiny lately, and theidea that ants demonstrate sparks ofcognition has certainly not been rejected bythose involved in these investigations. 2. Ants store food, repel attackers and usechemical signals to contact one another incase of attack. Such chemicalcommunication can be compared to thehuman use of visual and auditory channels(as in religious chants, advertising imagesand jingles, political slogans and martialmusic) to arouse and propagate moods andattitudes. The biologist Lewis Thomas wrote,Ants are so much like human beings as tobe an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raiseaphids* as livestock, launch armies to war,use chemical sprays to alarm and confuseenemies, capture slaves, engage in childlabour, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television. 3. However, in ants there is nocultural transmission -everything must be encodedin the genes - whereas inhumans the opposite istrue. Only basic instincts arecarried in the genes of anewborn baby, other skillsbeing learned from others inthe community as the childgrows up. It may seem that this culturalcontinuity gives us a huge advantage overants. They have never mastered fire 1 norprogressed. Their fungus farming and aphidherding crafts are sophisticated whencompared to the agricultural skills ofhumans five thousand years ago but havebeen totally overtaken by modern humanagribusiness. 4. Or have they? The farming methods of antsare at least sustainable. They do not ruinenvironments or use enormous amounts ofenergy. Moreover, recent evidence suggeststhat the crop farming of ants may be moresophisticated and adaptable than wasthought. 5. Ants were farmers fifty million years beforehumans were. Ants can't digest the cellulosein leaves - but some fungi can. The antstherefore cultivate these fungi in their nests,bringing them leaves to feed on, and then、use them as a source of food. Farmer antssecrete antibiotics to control other fungi thatmight act as 'weeds', and spread waste tofertilise the crop. 6. It was once thought that the fungus thatants cultivate was a single type that theyhad propagated, essentially unchanged fromthe distant past. Not so. Ulrich Mueller ofMaryland and his colleagues geneticallyscreened 862 different types of fungi takenfrom ants' nests. These turned out to behighly diverse: it seems that ants arecontinually domesticating new species. Evenmore impressively, DNA analysis of the fungisuggests that the ants improve or modify thefungi by regularly swapping and sharingstrains with neighbouring ant colonies. 7. Whereas prehistoric man had no exposure tourban lifestyles - the forcing house ofintelligence - the evidence suggests thatants have lived in urban settings for close ona hundred million years, developing andmaintaining underground 2 cities ofspecialised chambers and tunnels. 8. When we survey Mexico City, Tokyo, LosAngeles, we are amazed at what has beenaccomplished by humans. Yet Hoelldoblerand Wilson's magnificent work for ant lovers,The Ants, describes a supercolony of the antFormica yessensison the Ishikari Coast ofHokkaido. This 'megalopolis' was reported tobe composed of 360 million workers and amillion queens living in 4,500interconnected nests across a territory of2.7 square kilometres. 9. Such enduring and intricately meshed levelsof technical achievement outstrip by faranything achieved by our distant ancestors.We hail as masterpieces the cave paintingsin southern France and elsewhere, datingback some 20,000 years. Ant societiesexisted in something like their present formmore than seventy million years ago. Besidethis, prehistoric man looks technologicallyprimitive. Is this then some kind ofintelligence, albeit of a different kind 10. Research conducted at Oxford, Sussex andZurich Universities has shown that whendesert ants return from a foraging trip, theynavigate by integrating bearings anddistances, which they continuously update intheir heads. They combine the evidence ofvisual landmarks with a mental library oflocal directions, all within a framework whichis consulted and updated. So ants can learntoo. 11. And in a twelve-year programme of work,Ryabko and Reznikova have found evidencethat ants can transmit very complexmessages. Scouts who had located food in amaze returned to mobilise their foragingteams. They engaged in 3 contact sessions, atthe end of which the scout was removed inorder to observe what her team might do.Often the foragers proceeded to the exactspot in the maze where the food had been.Elaborate precautions were taken to preventthe foraging team using odour clues.Discussion now centres on whether the routethrough the maze is communicated as a 'leftright'sequence of turns or as a 'compassbearing and distance' message. 12. During the course of this exhaustive study,Reznikova has grown so attached to herlaboratory ants that she feels she knowsthem as individuals - even without the paintspots used to mark them. It's no surprisethat Edward Wilson, in his essay, 'In thecompany of ants', advises readers who askwhat to do with the ants in their kitchen to:'Watch where you step. Be careful of littlelives.' Questions 1-6 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage I? In boxes I 6 on your answer sheet, write TRUEif the statement agrees with the information FALSEif the statement contradicts the information NOT GIVENif there is no information on this 1 Ants use the same channels of communication as humans do. 2 City life is one factor that encourages the development of intelligence. 4 3 Ants can build large cities more quickly than humans do. 4 Some ants can find their way by making calculations based on distance and position. 5 In one experiment, foraging teams were able to use their sense of smell to find food. 6 The essay, 'In the company of ants', explores ant communication. Questions 7-13 Complete the summary using the list of words, A-O, below. Write the correct letter, A-O, in boxes 7 -13 on your answer sheet. Ants as farmers Ants have sophisticated methods of farming, including herding livestock and growingcrops, which are in many ways similar to those used in human agriculture. The antscultivate a large number of different species of edible fungi which convert7into a form which they can digest. They use their own natural8 as weed-killers and also use unwanted materials as 9. Genetic analysis shows they constantly upgrade these fungi by developing new speciesand by 10 species with neighbouring ant colonies. In fact, the farmingmethods of ants could be said to be more advanced than human agribusiness, since theyuse11 methods, they do not affect the12and do notwaste13. A aphids B agricultural C cellulose D exchanging 5 E energy F fertilizers G food H fungi L other species I growing J interbreeding K natural Msecretions N sustainable O environment 6