"Ants Are Really Good at Sniffing Out Enemies—Literally" Topic

"Ants use chemicals called pheromones to communicate, laying trails to, for instance, lead their comrades to food. It's a brilliant little adaptation: essentially a shout of "hey, over here" that lasts a really long time. It's especially convenient considering that ants can't actually shout (though some do make noise with their legs).

To recognize one another in the colony—worker caste versus soldier caste, for instance—ants use hydrocarbon compounds secreted onto their tough exoskeletons. And new research out today in Cell Reports shows just how complex these blends of hydrocarbons are and how adept ants are at sniffing them out. The blends not only vary minutely between castes, but between colonies, allowing a given society to rapidly detect and kill intruders. That's right: Ants are on the lookout for their enemies' BO.

"What we found is that ants have quite an unusual capability to smell and sense these long-chain hydrocarbon compounds from the cuticle using their antennae, using their olfactory system," says Anandasankar Ray of the University of California, Riverside…"
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I was always fascinated for ants!. (smile).

Amicalement
Armand

Them!

Phase IV.

I rest my case.

Wait. used as a targeter on a cruise missile….

Some ants raid the nurseries of their prey and carry off the larvae and pupae. When the "foreigners" (not even required to be of the same ant species) grow up they adopt the scent of their captors and thus are considered in every way to be bona fide members.

Some predators and parasitic insects also adopt the scent of ants and infiltrate by mimicking the "body language" as well as the scent of their victims. Some even get carried around, or attach themselves to individual ants, eating a portion of the food intended for their "ride". And still others drop by the nurseries for regular meals eating the eggs and larvae. The only thing that keeps the ant colony from becoming extinct is the propensity of the parasites to eat each other when they encounter each other….