[mallomarmeasle]

That is super cool. Unfortunately I cannot access the original article to see the methodology, but they mention using a system that can track individual ants in a colony of ~100.

I wonder what kind of biometrics allow that. The ants do not seem to be tagged individually in the linked video: https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/fileadmin/uniwue/2026/0702Ameis...

Not to be too speciesist, but the ants kind of all look the same to me.

[downwithbgp]

You don't need access to the paper, their methodology is explained in the SI: https://www.pnas.org/doi/suppl/10.1073/pnas.2614400123/suppl...

[mmooss]

I was wondering about the same thing. From the OP:

"... the team examined six colonies, each comprising 110 ants .... Using a fully automated tracking system, the researchers were able to precisely monitor the movements and hundreds of thousands of interactions of each ant, as well as their wound care, over a period of weeks."

I wonder about the background of that software - how does it work, who developed it, how much does it cost, how much data does it output? It's applications are profound, including for human privacy, but I think I already knew about its use there.