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Watching the humans perform the same trial and error moves as ants really does beg a lot of questions… I guess the ants, like humans, are merely acting on movement feedback, with no need for any higher cognition - but it’s still problem solving…

if they were allowed to use anything other than movement feedback, im embarrassed as a species. I'm not pleased about losing this as is. If the ants can beat us at this, what else can they beat us at? Can other species beat us at things? I suddenly feel very small for the first time in my life.

Humans are pretty mediocre. We aren't the fastest swimmers, runners, climbers or strongest fighters. The only thing that saved us from extinction is our ability to use tools, teamwork technologies. Tool usage and teamwork is well documented for animals, but technologies is what is the diffrence.

some groups were allowed to communicate verbally, others were not, and some even had masks and sunglasses to inhibit non-verbal communication. the human groups that could communicate freely did fine, in others they tended to simply pull in whichever direction had the least resistance

You wouldn't need to do a study to conclude that dogs are better judges of character, less selfish, more honest, less violent, less sadistic, and less likely to rape children than police officers.

The publication says "People attempted to solve the puzzle because they were instructed to, while ants were motivated to carry the load to the nest ... since the load was made to resemble food" If they made a big slab of T-shaped bacon for the people, the results would tell a different story I bet.

Hyperbolic clickbait. The researchers found that the ants *sometimes* beat the humans, and that overall the humans were *not better than* ants *when they could not communicate normally*.