Ants Learn From Experience and Can Hold Grudges, Study Finds [Video]

Like humans, animals experience complex emotions like empathy, love, grief and joy. They can also hold grudges.

In a recent study, a team of biologists found that ants can learn from experience and hold grudges when confronted with competitors from another nest with whom they’ve had previous negative experiences.

“We often have the idea that insects function like pre-programmed robots. Our study provides new evidence that, on the contrary, ants also learn from their experiences and can hold a grudge,” said Dr. Volker Nehring, an academic counselor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology at Germany’s University of Freiburg, in a press release from the university.

Nehring co-led the research team with doctoral student Mélanie Bey.

The team put the ants in the experiment in confrontations with rivals from another nest. The study ants remembered negative experiences they had had during earlier encounters, behaving more aggressively toward ants they had experienced as aggressive than …