A new case of jumping behaviour in ants, as part of the foraging strategy

We demonstrated for the first time in this laboratory study that the tree-d welling ant Polyrhachis laboriosa can jump down beyond any context of escap e or predation. When it is necessary to jump to reach an isolated food supp ly or explore a larger territory, workers of P. laboriosa jump down from a height of 5-100 cm. The characteristics of this active jumping display are described here. During foraging or exploratory conditions, the workers lear nt to jump and integrated this behaviour into their strategy of exploitatio n of the 3D-environment. Under laboratory conditions, they began to jump ea rlier and more frequently as a function of their motivation during successi ve tests. (C) Academie des Sciences/Elsevier, Paris.