At ZME Science, Mihai Andrei reports on a recent expeeriment pitting longhorn ants against humans:

The piano movers problem is a classic geometric puzzle that tests problem-solving skills and cooperation. Participants must maneuver a piano (in this case, a T-shaped load) through a series of chambers connected by narrow slits. This requires careful spatial reasoning and coordination. The challenge essentially revolves around navigating tight spaces, assessing angles, and avoiding obstacles while progressing from the starting chamber to an exit.

Humans took on the puzzle voluntarily. For ants, the load resembled food, motivating them to transport it collectively into their nest. Two similar mazes (one for ants, one for humans) were used.

“Ants outperform humans, at group puzzle-solving activity,” December 27, 2024

So what happened? When one human was pitted against one ant, the human did better.

When working in either a group of 6-9 or a group of 26, the humans were handicapped by being forbidden to communicate. They had to wear surgical masks and sunglasses to avoid accidental communication. The ants worked in groups of 7 or 80.

What happened then?

Ants did better in large groups but humans did worse, handicapped by an inability to communicate. Sometimes the ants did better than humans when working in large groups.

The study reveals divergent evolutionary strategies in cognitive development. Ants have maximized collective capabilities at the expense of individual intelligence, while humans have evolved sophisticated individual cognition but struggle with collective efficiency. “Outperform humans“

That further claim that humans “struggle with collective efficiency” is nonsense, of course. The humans were explicitly forbidden to communicate abstract ideas and that’s what we do in order to solve such problems.

The paper is open access.

You may also wish to read: The hive mind: Leafcutter ants behave like farmhands but… But they are actually following a colony algorithm rather than making individual decisions. We humans struggle to understand the hive mind because our world is one of individual minds that can, with effort, be got to work together — for a while.