Page 31 - The Miracle in the Ant

In research done on social creatures like ants, bees and termites, who
live in colonies, the responses of these animals in the communication
process are listed under several main categories: Taking up alarm posi-
tions, meeting, cleaning, liquid food exchange, grouping, recognition,
caste detection… 8
The ants, who constitute an orderly social structure with these vari-
ous responses, lead a life based on mutual news exchange and they
have no difficulty in achieving this correspondence. We could say that
ants, with their impressive communication system, are hundred percent
successful on subjects that human beings sometimes cannot resolve nor
agree upon by talking (e.g. meeting, sharing, cleaning, defence, etc.).

News Exchange Between Groups Of Ants
First, scout ants go to food source that has been newly discovered.
Then they call other ants by a liquid they secrete in their glands called
pheromone(*). When the crowd round the food gets bigger, this
pheromone secretion issues the workers a limit again. If the piece of
food is very small or far away, the scouts make an adjustment in the
number of ants trying to get to the food by issuing signals. If a nice piece
of food is found, the ants try harder to leave more traces thus more ants

(*) PHEROMONES: Is composed of the words "pher" – carrying, and "hormone"
– hormone and it means "hormone carriers". Pheromones are signals used be-
tween members of the same species and they are usually produced in special
glands to be spread around.
Communication by pheromones is widespread among insects. Pheromone acts as
a tool of sexual attraction between females and males. The type which is analyzed
most is the one used by moths as the substance of mating. A female gypsy moth
may influence male moths few kilometres away by producing a pheromone called
"disparlure". Since the male is able to sense a few hundred molecules of the sig-
naling female in just one milliliters of air, disparlure is effective even when dis-
persed over a very large area.
Pheromones play an important role in insect communications, the ants using
pheromones as tracers to show the way to food sources. When a honey bee
stings, not only does it leave its needle in the skin of its victim, but it also leaves
a chemical that calls the other honey bees to attack. Similarly, worker ants of
many species secrete pheromones as an alarm substance to be used when threat-
ened by an enemy; the pheromone is dispersed in the air and gathers other work-
ers. If these ants meet the enemy, they also produce pheromones, thus the signal
either increases or decreases depending upon the nature of the danger.

Harun Yahya 31