Long before ants began caring for their young, the same brain circuits were helping them find food

Scientists studying ants have found that the brain circuits that caregiving behaviour may have evolved from far older circuits that originally controlled hunger. The research, carried out on clonal raider ants at Rockefeller University and published in the journal Nature, shows that two chemical signals in the ant brain, known as neuropeptide F and allatostatin A, control whether an individual ant acts as a caregiver to larvae or leaves the nest to forage for food.

Raccontata datimesofindia.indiatimes.com