The smell of ants

[Lauran]

Today, I told my friend that the food that he bought smells like ants. He laughed and said: "Ants don't smells like anything!"

 

[Hypnalis]

Formic acid - Wikipedia

 

[Outdated]

We have a breed of ant here we call Smelly Ants. They're a small black ant and they don't bite, but they give off a pheromone smell that makes other species of ant terribly afraid.

They're quite nasty in another way, they farm insects. They'll find and capture insects from a wide area and put them on the healthiest plants they can find and farm them, some they farm for the sugars they excrete, others will just get fattened up then eaten. Unfortunately the healthiest plants in most places are people's vegetable gardens.

 

[IXxTchxXI]

Well, now I want to smell ants just to see if they smell like anything

 

[gigi1919]

They absolutely do have a smell. Even the normal European ones that are not exotic. They have kind of stingy smell. Like pinching my nose.

Good question!

 

[Gerontius]

One very small black ant here is called the pismire or "piss ant" which is probably because they do smell faintly of urine. At least that kind does. Ants do very much have a smell and they communicate with smells only other ants understand; fascinating little guys really.

 

[Tom]

Yes, they definately do. Smell is their main form of communication and they have numerous glands that produce various chemicals. The only one I could detect was the formic acid they secrete in a spray form as a weapon when threatened. I had a few ant farms but don't remember if you could smell them when they are just chill doing their nest chores.

 

[Judge]

It's getting to that time of year. Pavement ants, carpenter ants, red ants.

Don't want to see them, let alone smell them. I don't appreciate creepy crawlers in my home in general. But ants? Yikes...they show up in such large numbers.

Ready to greet them indoors with a smile and my can of RAID if necessary. Aloha!

 

[8398]

I used to live where there's abundant small black "sugar" ants. My sister had a sugar bath scrub and before we knew it there was a massive organized line to our bathroom xD

I feel like the taste of blue cheese reminds me of those.

 

[MildredHubble]

People thought I was crazy when I told them I could smell if a cup of tea or coffee had sugar or sweetener in it Its always made sense to me that I could smell something I could taste. As far as I know, ants secrete something to leave a trail for other ants to follow, so I wouldn't be surprised if people can smell that and associate it with how ants smell

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

I read Richard Feynman's biography years ago, I stated how to stop ants, kill their trail, pheromones worked like charm.

 

[Harmonie]

Oh yeah, I definitely can smell them. Unfortunately.

 

[SusanLR]

A vinegar smell definitely. Especially the big red ants.
I never smell it though unless they are upset.

 

[Hypnalis]

I read Richard Feynman's biography years ago, I stated how to stop ants, kill their trail, pheromones worked like charm.

Works if you can find the trails, but doesn't harm the nest.

One way to take out a nest whose location is unknown: give them food, wait a bit so they set up strongly marked trails, then poison the bait with something they'll take back with them.

NB: there are 14000+ species of ants. There must be many "best" ways to deal with them, and I strongly doubt there's any method that works with all of them.
They don't adjust their actions to circumstances well though (unlike e.g. rats, which are "neophobic, and avoid "bad places"): ant workers and warriors don't change their behavior much, so they're predictable.

Edit:
IMO the two most interesting characteristics about humans "in the wild" is
* The evolved ability for persistence/endurance hunting
* The ability to predict prey (and competitor) behavior and take advantage of it

Insects are predictable.

Collectively they're still a significant competitor of course - but there are a lot of them (IIRC the total biomass of insects is larger than the total of all birds and mammals).

 

[Lauran]

Well, now I want to smell ants just to see if they smell like anything

Ahahaha, sorry...

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

I never had ants in my house see one ant locate trail destroy trail no more ants.

 

[AuAL]

People thought I was crazy when I told them I could smell if a cup of tea or coffee had sugar or sweetener in it Its always made sense to me that I could smell something I could taste. As far as I know, ants secrete something to leave a trail for other ants to follow, so I wouldn't be surprised if people can smell that and associate it with how ants smell

Most of the detail of what we “taste” is by vapour transfer to the back of the nose, i.e. we actually smell it. The “taste buds” on the tongue are quite basic in their discrimination. A simple test is to try “tasting” something while holding your nose.

With respect to ants, they deposit pheromones (smelly chemicals) along their trails. Other ants use this to follow the trail to food. The more they traverse the trail, the stronger the pheromone trail becomes. Random deviations from the trail may discover “short-cuts”. The more these are followed (they will guide the ants to-and-fro more quickly) the more they are selected and reinforced. It is these characteristics of ant behaviour that inspired the “Ant Colony Optimisation” computational algorithms widely used to solve problems of finding “shortest path” solutions to problems.

 

[MildredHubble]

“Ant Colony Optimisation” computational algorithms widely used to solve problems of finding “shortest path” solutions to problems.

Like the "Traveling Salesman" problem?

Its quite funny (going off topic for a moment) that optimization is such a huge priority to companies like Google who create an efficient and simple interface, but they change it needlessly because they think if they dont, people will think its old fashioned. I find it very annoying lol!

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

Fungus is also used for shortest path.

 

[AuAL]

Travelling Salesman is the famous example many people have heard of, but ACO works well on a variety of discrete combinatorial optimisation problems where the solution is “constructed” by aggregation of a number of elements.