Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale (CRCA)

Their brains may be tiny, but they manage to find their way, communicate and even develop complex strategies to feed their communities... Social insects therefore demonstrate remarkable intelligence, which allows them to create real societies despite their brains being infinitely smaller than ours. But how can we actually measure the intelligence of an insect with which we have (almost) nothing in common? Head to the Animal Cognition Research Centre in Toulouse, where scientists have developed…

Dans le cadre du projet de science participative « Derrière le blob, la recherche », porté par le CNRS, 15.000 volontaires s'apprêtent à accueillir cet étrange organisme unicellulaire, avec lequel ils devront mener des expériences en suivant des protocoles scientifiques très stricts. Les nombreux résultats récoltés permettront à la biologiste Audrey Dussutour d'étudier l'impact du changement climatique sur le blob.

Dans ce tutoriel, Audrey Dussutour revient sur toutes les étapes de la réalisation d'un élevage de blob, de la récolte dans la nature à son endormissement, en passant par les étapes de croissance. NB : Ce tuto est surtout à destination des personnes souhaitant élever un blob à la maison en dehors du cadre de la recherche scientifique. Les participants à l'expérience de science participative "Derrière le blob, la recherche" doivent suivre le protocole qui leur a été envoyé.

Sélection d'images en time-lapse issues des recherches menées sur le blob. 1) Environnement et alimentation (#1 à #5) #1 et #2 Blob dans son milieu naturel. #3 Blob se nourrissant de champignons. #4 et #5 Blob se nourrissant de flocons d'avoine. 2) Déplacement du blob (#6 à #) #6 et #7 Blob explorant son environnement #8 Blob explorant un labyrinthe à la recherche de nourriture 3) Fusion…

Episode 35: How an Australian ant optimises its journey time with visual indicators to minimise risk when leaving the nest. Let's go on an obstacle course full of surprises!

A network of cells that can learn and adapt...and all this without a brain! The Blob continues to fascinate scientists like Audrey Dussutour, who has studied it for years. She hopes that it will reveal new properties and insights into the mystery of life itself.

Why are there no collisions among schools of fish or flocks of starlings that make extremely rapid changes of direction? And how do these thousands of individuals manage to share so much information? This collective intelligence that exists at different levels of life is vital for many species, but humans do not yet engage in it... Researchers are studying these properties of life with the aim of developing bio-inspired algorithms for numerous applications.

The Youtube channel Zeste de science explores all aspects of scientific research, proving that even the most complicated scientific facts can be explained in less than 5 minutes, and that even the most seemingly trivial events of everyday life, if thoroughly studied, can contribute to the biggest technological advances. Episode 17: Whenever a threat appears near a hive, dozens of bees assemble to draw it off. These bees warn each other of the danger by emitting alarm…

The Youtube channel Zeste de science explores all aspects of scientific research, proving that even the most complicated scientific facts can be explained in less than 5 minutes, and that even the most seemingly trivial events of everyday life, if thoroughly studied, can contribute to the biggest technological advances. Episode 7: Ants, despite being so small, turn out to be true geniuses when it comes to building their nest. Researchers from the French National Center for…

The anthill is a complex space in constant change. A research team from the Research Centre on Animal Cognition attempted to study the way the building of this structure results from individual and collective behaviours. They developed a device in order to observe and model tasks performed by each ant, and produce a virtual replica of the anthill structures.