A new journal published on Cell Reports by the University of California says that ants use their sense of smell to discern differences in chemical compounds on other ants’ bodies, and they have always been using their miraculous olfaction in order to protect themselves or even communicate with each other.
ANTS USE THEIR SENSE OF SMELL FOR EVERYTHING
XAnandasankar Ray, neuroscientist and lead writer of the study, says that there was never an answer to the question: “How ants co-exist in such massive colonies having specialized tasks?”. According to Ray, ants use chemistry in order to communicate, exist and work together in a society they maintain by themselves.
Now we know that ants use odor, produced by their shells, to identify the queen, the workers, and intrudors from other colonies since every ‘ant society’ has a different, distinctive smell. Also, professor Ray claims that ants’ sense of smell is so outstanding that they can easily acknowledge who the outsider is and kill it as a team.
Olfaction, though, is not only found in ants. Many insects use pheromones, which define the behavior of other representatives of the same species, setting roles, hierarchy and breeding conditions.
THE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE STUDY
According to professor Anandasankar Ray, the two most fascinating discoveries was the extremely sizeable olfactory system ants have and their ability to distinguish very similar compounds as different.
Ray, with the help of his colleagues, noted the electrical activity appeared on the worker ants’ antennae, everytime they were being placed close to hydrocarbon chemicals. The experiment was conducted via an electrophysiology method and the researchers had trained the ants to link hydrocarbon chemicals with sugar water. The insects were able to distinguish different chemicals from one another without difficulty.
THE STARS OF THE SHOW
Camponotus floridanus was the ant that was used in this study and you might know it as the Florida carpenter ant. These ants have a wider array of olfactory proteins in their genetic material than humans and they are among the largest in Florida even though they are not really aggressive.
If you can’t get enough of these hardworking creatures, find out what goes on inside Ant Hills here.
