We’ve known that ants are social animals like us, but a new study by Noa Pinter-Wollman of Stanford University and colleagues show just how similar they are to humans.Heck, they’ve even got the an social networking system similar to Facebook!
On average, each ant had around 40 interactions. However, around 10 percent of the ants made more than 100 contacts with other ants. Further research is examining just what makes these more social ants different than the others within the colonies.
The researchers compare this type of socialization to that seen on sites like Facebook. While most people have a relatively small number of Facebook friends, there are some with a friends list in the thousands. It is these friends that act as a sort of information hub, spreading information out to a large number of readers. These particular ants are functioning as a large social hub of information.
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