[Lewis Thomson (OP)]

Donald wants to find the answers to this question that he submitted to The Naked Scientists

"Certain ants farm fungi, other ants milk aphids.  Certainly, these are behaviours that are now generational.  Can scientists determine whether this behaviour is passed on by learning or is it instinctive in a collective of ants reared away from their colony?"

Place your answers in the comments below...

[alancalverd]

I asked an ant. He said "Some humans spend their lives growing and harvesting  vegetables or milking cows. The means by which these skills are replicated in subsequent generations is not known. The greater mystery is why they tolerate and even feed the majority of humans who seem to have no useful function at all."

[Deecart]

Yes, ants like other species belonging to the order of hymenoptera (and like other arthopodes) have a good ability to learn.
It is obvious that a new colony (the quen of the ants do not really teach anything to her offspring) only depends on the innate knowledge every individual possesses.
But they can learn and even can do inovation.

How do we know that ?

Concerning the hymenoptera order (ants are part of this order) :

Insects are also capable of behavioral innovations. Innovation is defined as the creation of a new or modified learned behavior not previously found in the population.[22] Innovative abilities can be experimentally studied in insects through the use of problem solving tasks.[23] When presented with a string-pulling task, many bumblebees cannot solve the task, but a few can innovate the solution. Those that initially could not solve the task can learn to solve it by observing an innovator bee solving the task. These learned behaviors can then spread culturally through bee populations.[21] More recent studies in insects have begun to look at what traits (e.g. exploratory tendency) predict the propensity for an individual insect to be an innovator.[24]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_cognition

And because of the studies of the "mushroom bodies" (cerebral matter of insects).

One important and highly studied brain region involved in insect foraging are the mushroom bodies, a structure implicated in insect learning and memory abilities. The mushroom body consists of two large stalks called peduncles which have cup-shaped projections on their ends called calyces. The role of the mushroom bodies is in sensory integration and associative learning.[30] They allow the insect to pair sensory information and reward. Experiments where the function of the mushroom bodies are impaired through ablation find that organisms are behaviourally normal but have impaired learning. Flies with impaired mushroom bodies cannot form an odour association[31] and cockroaches with impaired mushroom bodies cannot make use of spatial information to form memories about locations.[32] Electrophysiological underpinnings of the cognition in different parts of the insect brain can be studied by various techniques including in vivo recordings from these parts of the insect brain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_cognition

[evan_au]

Ants may have pre-programmed behaviors, but they are flexible to a certain extent:
- The mix of behaviors can be controlled by the queen, using pheromones
- Some learning is possible, such as rapidly finding new food sources (also assisted by pheromones)

[dorothytetcher]

I asked an ant. He said "Some humans spend their lives growing and harvesting  vegetables or milking cows. The means by which these skills are replicated in subsequent generations is not known. The greater mystery is why they tolerate and even feed the majority of humans who seem to have no useful function at all."

That's well put.

[Zer0]

I asked an ant. He said "Some humans spend their lives growing and harvesting  vegetables or milking cows. The means by which these skills are replicated in subsequent generations is not known. The greater mystery is why they tolerate and even feed the majority of humans who seem to have no useful function at all."

That's well put.

& Welcome to the Forum!

P.S. - 🐜