Skunks are stinky. The musk ox emits a scent during the season. Dog paws smell like corn chips for some lucky owners. The other members of the animal kingdom are also smelly. ants are one of the most stinky animals.
People have come across ants. Most people don't know that ants smell.
There are more than 12,000 ant species. Clint Penick, an assistant professor of ecology, evolution and organismal biology at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, often gets asked if he studies red ants or black ants. One is by smell.
Some smells are hard to get rid of.
He said that if he found a species he would pick it up and crush it.
Not all ant species have enough smell to be detected by the human nose. The scent may be mild, but some can be smelled after being crushed. Some ants can be smelled from a distance if they are in a large colony.
ants emit four main smells. The citronella ants, also known as larger yellow ants and smaller yellow ants, are the first.
The smell of trap-jaw ants is not bad, it smells like chocolate. The predator ants emit a chocolate-like aroma when they make an alarm in their head to let other members of the colony know when they are in danger. Penick said that he only did it once to see if it was true, but usually tries to avoid it.
Some ants, including wood ants and carpenter ants, have a distinct smell they use for defense.
The final ant smell used to be controversial, but Penick said he and a colleague settled the debate with a study published in the journal American Entomologist. House ants have long been thought of as smelling like coconut or rotten butter. The scent of blue cheese hit Penick when he first sniffed one. He shipped off the three foods, including butter that he let rot in his kitchen, and ant samples to a friend's lab, where a tool called a gas chromatograph analyzed the volatile compounds released into the air. They compared the compounds that made up the smells of food and ants. The team found a match between the ants and blue cheese.
Penick had people rate the smell of the ant. Some people thought blue cheese smelled like rotted coconut. Penick rotted a coconut in his backyard and found a mold that is the same mold that is used to make blue cheese. Another mystery solved.
It was originally published on Live Science.
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