Workers of the desert ant Cataglyphis fortis can collectively learn to associate one odorant with food after one trial, and about half of the ants remember this association for up to 26 days afterwards [42].
An ant's antennae are highly sensitive and contain both touch and smell organs. Each ant colony has a unique smell, so members recognize each other and sniff out intruders. All ants can produce pheromones, which are scent chemicals used for communication and to make trails.
Ants don't have complex emotions such as love, anger, or empathy, but they do approach things they find pleasant and avoid the unpleasant. They can smell with their antennae, and so follow trails, find food and recognise their own colony.
Ants become the pallbearer
After a few days the dead ant is carried off and placed on the “ant graveyard” by the other dead ants. This may seem like ants have complex feelings and need a few days to grieve before they dispose of the body, but in reality it's far more chemical than that.
When an ant dies, the others do not notice straight away. They will just walk around it as if it was not there, but after three days, the ants will notice. After three days, the corpse will start decaying and it is at this point that it releases oleic acid. This acid is the smell of a dead and rotten ant.
It is advised not to squash ants, doing so will only release pheromones and trigger more ants to come to the location and cause more trouble to you and your family. Ants are known to pack a deadly bite that causes excruciating pain for a short time.
In the insect world, it's usually butterflies that are associated with social behavior, but according to a new study it's ants that really can't live without their peers … literally. Discovery News reports that ants died after just 6 days of isolation, whereas the socially integrated controls lived for up to 66 days.
To the naked eye, ants deal with their dead much like humans. When a member of the colony dies, the carcass will lie where it fell for a period of roughly two days. In the fashion of a wake, this time period presumably gives the other ants time to pay their respects to their fallen comrade.
Individual ants have tiny brains but together the many ants of a colony can exhibit remarkable 'intelligence'. Ants exhibit complex and apparently intelligent behaviour; they can navigate over long distances, find food and communicate, avoid predators, care for their young, etc.
Ants transport their dead there in order to protect themselves and their queen from contamination. This behavior has to do with the way ants communicate with each other via chemicals. When an ant dies, its body releases a chemical called oleic acid.
In fact, there's mounting evidence that insects can experience a remarkable range of feelings. They can be literally buzzing with delight at pleasant surprises, or sink into depression when bad things happen that are out of their control.
While ants with normal receptors continued to recognize and fight ants from other colonies, ants with blocked or over-activated receptors displayed dramatically reduced aggressive behavior. “Accepting friends and rejecting foes is one of the most important decisions an ant worker must make,” said Ferguson.
Just as humans, the ants use body language to communicate things. They can tell the other ants things by lightly touching or stroking the receiver in different ways. This way, they can combine signals of pheromones with that of touch and body language, providing an advanced form of communication.
Social insects communicate mouth-to-mouth. If you've ever watched ants, you've probably noticed their tendency to "kiss," quickly pressing their mouths together in face-to-face encounters. That's how they feed each other and their larvae.
Ants are very loyal to their own colony, but they can be quite nasty toward outsiders. Competition among colonies for food and other resources often leads to aggression. Many species establish a territory around their nest that is off-limits to neighboring ants.
Scent (Pheromones)
The most important way that ants communicate with other colony members is through unique chemicals called pheromones. Using their antenna to “smell” the pheromones, ants can communicate everything from colony activity to where food is located.
Ants are similar to many other insects in that they possess senses such as hearing, touch and smell. Although hearing is very different in ants than animals that typically have ears, ants do possess the capability to hear.
On the conservative side, there are some 2.5 million ants for every person on Earth. Who would win in a fight, you or 2.5 million ants?
It would take several hundred ants to pick up each pound of the person. So you'd need to know the person's weight and then multiply that by 200 to 300 ants.
When an ant dies, its nestmates quickly pack it off. That way, the risk to the colony of infection is reduced. But how do they know its dead? Theory has held that dead ants release chemicals created by decomposition (such as fatty acids) that signal their death to the colony's living ants.
Ants are very sensitive to pheromones, a chemical substance they produce and release into the environment. When a pheromone trail is disrupted by chalk or a line drawn in their path, the scent trail they were following is temporarily disrupted.
Refrigerator. It's not impossible for ants to raid your refrigerator. Despite the door seal and the colder temperatures, ants will get inside your fridge and raid boxed foods and uncovered leftovers. They'll get inside bagged sugar and any other opened or half-opened package.
The average lifespan of an ant can be anywhere from a few weeks to 15 years. That depends on the species, the role the ant plays and the availability of food sources. For instance, a black garden ant can live almost two decades, while fire ant workers are expected to live less than a month.
Over 15 years ago, researchers found that insects, and fruit flies in particular, feel something akin to acute pain called “nociception.” When they encounter extreme heat, cold or physically harmful stimuli, they react, much in the same way humans react to pain.
Ants, like other insects, have a heart that pumps hemolymph rhythmically.