We have had a continuing problem with ants, and have repelled their invasion as well as we can. But I’d like to know; When I watch ants walking past each other in a trail, they seem to touch each other gently, head-to-head, it seems. Why do they do this? Are they spreading some kind of scent?
I think this is probably better suited to General Questions. I’ll bounce it over there for ya. I hope the ants don’t touch me on the way.
…because they can?
Okay.
They’re communicating by exchanging pheromone signals with each other, which mean things like “yes, I live here, how about yourself?” and “food is over this way”.
http://www.amazinganimalbehavior.com/article1002.html
More info on ant pheromones here.
http://www.conservation.state.mo.us/kids/out-in/2000/02/2.htm
Look closely and you will see – they are actually giving each other the High Five.
P.S. – to erradicate them, get something called Terro Ant Killer. It’s a boric acid based liquid that they take back to their nest, thus killing off the entire colony. Any time they start setting up a highway into my kitchen, i squirt a couple of drops along their path and within a few days… * GONE*. All of them.
Only works on sweet-eating ants though.
…
“…the great, big, real-life natural world we see on The Discovery Channel” – Scott Dickensheets
That is quite desperately cool.
I took a package holiday in the Canary Islands once, and of course my apartment was overrun with cockroaches, with whom I quickly developed a policy of mutual indifference. However I did squish one on a particularly boring evening and spent about three fascinating hours watching a bunch of ants carry all its bits off down a distant crack in the skirting. If I put an obstacle in their way, the next ant along would get confused but figure it out alone till he got back in the loop, and after a couple of minutes the streaming hundreds of ants would all know about the obstacle before they reached it. They were intensely organised. There were little ant foremen, delivery drivers, picketers demanding a bigger cut of the roach, salesmen, travel agents, librarians, performance artists, the lot.
Eventually I got curious and gently lifted the skirting board to see where they were going. Imagine my surprise when I found them reassembling my cockroachy nemesis, who looked up darkly and gave me a cold smile.
I was back in Scotland before dawn.
Because they just keep going in circles whenever they try to pat each other on the ass.