Abstract
AbstractWorking on the numerosity ability of the ant Myrmica sabuleti, we have already summarized for the readers’ convenience our previous papers in two successive publications. Since that time, we have produced six more papers on the subject, and we thought it was time to present a summary of them. These studies deal with the ants’ ability in expecting the following element in an arithmetic or a geometric sequence, as well as with the required similarity between visual cues and the maximum horizontal and vertical distance between such cues enabling the ants to mentally add them up. The experimental methods that were used in these studies are here only briefly reported and their most important results are concisely related, as the extended information can be found in these six papers here summarized. We present novel tables and figures for illustrating this synthesis.
Highlights
Several animals are capable of prospective thinking
Workers of the ant M. sabuleti can add elements when seeing them simultaneously, not when seeing them consecutively (Cammaerts & Cammaerts, 2019a, b), but no further precision was known on the conditions required for them adding up cues
For increasing our knowledge on the subject, we examined, in three successive works, if M. sabuleti workers add only identical elements or elements of different kinds, and what is the horizontal and vertical distance between two cues beyond which the ants no longer add the cues but act such as when they perceive them consecutively
Summary
Several animals are capable of prospective thinking. As examples, scrub jays can anticipate their need of food in response to a learned situation and independently of their present need (Raby et al, 2007; Correia et al, 2007). Kea parrots (Nestor notabilis) can wait in favor of a preferred reward (Schwing et al, 2017) Such cognitive ability leans on episodic memory (Clayton & Dickinson, 1998). The hippocampus has been shown to play an essential role for ensuring episodic memory (Suddendorf et al, 2009) This fore thinking requires memorizing past experienced events as well as, at the same time, their localization in the running time (Jozet-Alves, 2012). Concerning the adding ability of animals, this is acquired through three cognitive steps: discriminating amounts of elements, precisely assessing such amounts, and being able to add and subtract elements. Workers of the ant M. sabuleti can add elements when seeing them simultaneously, not when seeing them consecutively (Cammaerts & Cammaerts, 2019a, b), but no further precision was known on the conditions required for them adding up cues. We here relate our six last works on the numerosity ability of the workers of the ant M. sabuleti, largely shortening our experimental protocols and results since they are thoroughly described in these six papers (Cammaerts & Cammaerts, 2021a, b, c, d, e, f)
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