Ants that consume a sugary treat mixed with caffeine become noticeably better at finding their way back to it. A new study published in iScience shows that these ants take more direct routes to the reward, even though they do not move any faster. This suggests caffeine improves their ability to learn and remember locations. The research focused on Argentine ants ( Linepithema humile ), a widespread invasive species, and the findings point to a possible new way to improve pest control by making bait more appealing and effective. "The idea with this project was to find some cognitive way of getting the ants to consume more of the poisonous baits we put in the field," says the first author and doctoral researcher Henrique Galante, a computational biologist at the University of Regensburg.…