The ants were only looking for food, but the researchers said the careful way the leaders led followers -- thereby turning them into leaders in their own right -- marked the Temnothorax albipennis ant as the very first example of a non-human animal exhibiting teaching behavior.Researchers then discovered that over time the teaching ants form groupings known as "unions." These "unions" cause the ants to take more and more time away from their duties while demanding the worker ants to feed them ever greater quantities. The "teaching" the ants performed tends to decline in quantity and quality over time, and eventually the worker ants cease functioning. Soon the "unions" go hungry as the workers fail to support them. It gets ugly from there.
"Within the field of animal behavior, we would say an animal is a teacher if it modifies behavior in the presence of another, at cost to itself, so another individual can learn more quickly," said Nigel R. Franks, professor of animal behavior and ecology, whose paper on the ant educators was published last week in the journal Nature.
Eventually the lead "union" ant blames the testing.
