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Ants Acquire the Notion of Zero through Experiences

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  • Marie-Claire Cammaerts
  • Roger Cammaerts

Abstract

The workers of the ant Myrmica sabuleti have a concrete notion of zero and locate this zero at the lower end of their mental number line. Here we examined how they acquire such a notion- do they have it natively or do they learn it over their life? We worked on young ants a few weeks old, and used operant conditioning to zero, the latter being a white paper or ‘nothing, no cue’, presented vs a black dot. In a first series of experiments, we showed that young ants do not detain the notion of zero. In a second series of experiments on the same ants, we first tempted learning them the notion of zero by facing them with a filled and an empty food tube during two days. They were then submitted to conditioning to ‘zero’, and they correctly responded to it. Consequently, the ants have not natively the notion of zero but acquire it through experiences.

Suggested Citation

  • Marie-Claire Cammaerts & Roger Cammaerts, 2021. "Ants Acquire the Notion of Zero through Experiences," International Journal of Biology, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 12(2), pages 1-13, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:ibn:ijbjnl:v:12:y:2021:i:2:p:13
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Maria Dolores de Hevia & Luisa Girelli & Margaret Addabbo & Viola Macchi Cassia, 2014. "Human Infants' Preference for Left-to-Right Oriented Increasing Numerical Sequences," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(5), pages 1-10, May.
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    1. Marie-Claire Cammaerts & Roger Cammaerts, 2021. "Young Ants Already Possess a Mental Number Line," International Journal of Biology, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 12(2), pages 1-1, December.
    2. Hermann Bulf & Viola Macchi Cassia & Maria Dolores de Hevia, 2014. "Are Numbers, Size and Brightness Equally Efficient in Orienting Visual Attention? Evidence from an Eye-Tracking Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(6), pages 1-6, June.

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    JEL classification:

    • R00 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General - - - General
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

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