The researchers taught the ants to link the scent of tumors with a reward by dabbing a drop of sugar into the water.
"Ants can be used as bio-detectors to discriminate healthy individuals from tumor-bearing ones," says Patrizia d'Ettorre, co-author of the study and a scholar at the Sorbonne Sorbonne Paris North University. "They are easy to train, learn fast, are very efficient, and are not expensive to keep," she added.
The researchers taught the ants to link the scent of tumors with a reward by dabbing a drop of sugar water in front of the urine from cancer-stricken mice. The flies lingered near the urine of malignant mice for roughly 20 percent longer than that of healthy mice when the team withdrew the sugar water because they were seeking a tasty treat.The ants' smell association was established in just three training sessions or around 10 minutes overall.
"We demonstrated that ants can discriminate the urine of healthy mice from the urine of tumor-bearing mice. This is more similar to a real-life situation than using cultured cancer cells. We were surprised by how efficient and reliable the ants are," she added, as perA black ant known as Formica fusca is widespread throughout Europe, as well as in some regions of Southern Asia and Africa. Its popular names include silky ant and dusky ant.
Using a classical conditioning strategy, workers of this ant species can learn to link an olfactory signal to a reward . Ants are quick learners; all it takes for them to develop a true long-term memory is one presentation of the stimuli. Additionally, this created memory is extinction-resistant.
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