Study: ants 'switch careers' as they get older

Ants change jobs as they age, a study that followed the lives of individual ants has found.

The career progression was discovered by a team at the University of Lausanene in Switzerland who tagged and tracked every individual in six colonies of carpenter ants.

Young ants were more likely to be nurses, taking care of the queen ant and her young, while older ants were more likely to be foragers, gathering food for the colony. In the middle of their "careers" the ants were commonly cleaners.

By: Kadhim Shubber, Edited by: Ian Steadman

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via Wired.co.uk



http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-04/19/ant-careers