%0 Journal Article %A Wendt, Stephanie %A J. Czaczkes, Tomer %D 2017 %T Materials & Methods and Results Supplement from Individual ant workers show self-control %U https://rs.figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Materials_Methods_and_Results_Supplement_from_Individual_ant_workers_show_self-control/5441563 %R 10.6084/m9.figshare.5441563.v1 %2 https://rs.figshare.com/ndownloader/files/9409078 %K self-control %K spatial discounting %K ants %K Lasius niger %K foraging behaviour %K impulsivity %X Often, the first option is not the best. Self-control can allow humans and animals to improve resource intake under such conditions. Self-control in animals is often investigated using intertemporal choice tasks—choosing a smaller reward immediately or a larger reward after a delay. However, intertemporal choice tasks may underestimate self-control, as test subjects may not fully understand the task. Vertebrates show much greater apparent self-control in more natural foraging contexts and spatial discounting tasks than in intertemporal choice tasks. However, little is still known about self-control in invertebrates. Here, we investigate self-control in the black garden ant Lasius niger. We confront individual workers with a spatial discounting task, offering high-quality reward far from the nest and poor-quality reward closer to the nest. Most ants (69%) successfully ignored the closer, poorer reward in favour of the further, better one. However, when both the far and the close rewards were of the same quality, most ants (83%) chose the closer feeder, indicating that the ants were indeed exercising self-control, as opposed to a fixation on an already known food source. %I The Royal Society