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Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
On the 1st of April 2016 the Animal Comparative Economics lab – ACElab will open at the Universität Regensburg. The lab is funded by the prestigious Emmy Noether funding programme, which aims to promote the best young scientists by allowing them to open their own independent research group. Dr. Tomer Czaczkes, along with his team, will spend the next five years studying the economic behaviour of animals, especially ants.
“Ants are wonderful animals for studying economic behaviour” says Dr. Czaczkes. “The ants we study, which are the most common ant in Germany, communicate to each other by putting dots of chemicals on the ground. When they find a resource they think is good, they make lots of dots. When they judge the resource to be poor, they make few dots. This dotting behaviour is a wonderful window into the mind of an animal.”
But what has this got to do with economic behaviour? Czaczkes wants to see whether ants make the same “irrational” economic behaviours which humans do. For example, humans value things depending on what they expect. If you expect nothing, but get €100, this is great! If you expect €500, but get €100, this is bad. In both cases, though, you got the same amount of money. “It looks like ants see the world of value in exactly the same way” says Czaczkes. “When they expect poor food, but get average food, they make lots of dots. But when they expect good food, but get average food, they make few dots. “Just like humans – for ants, value seems to be relative”, says Czaczkes.
The group will spend the next five years exploring how similar, or different, the economic thinking of animals such as ants, flies, and woodlice are to humans. They hope insights from their work will help us better understand why humans behave the way they do.
Contact:
Dr. Tomer Czaczkes
Universität Regensburg
Animal Comparative Economics lab – ACElab
Tel.: +49 (0)941 943-2461
Tomer.Czaczkes@ur.de
Dr. Tomer Czaczkes analysing the behaviour of ants.
Source: Copyright: Dr. Tomer Czaczkes – Exclusively for reports on the Animal Comparative Economics lab – ACElab
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Dr. Tomer Czaczkes analysing the behaviour of ants.
Source: Copyright: Dr. Tomer Czaczkes – Exclusively for reports on the Animal Comparative Economics lab – ACElab
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