Page 37 - The Miracle in the Ant

across, let us see now how these creatures who are so completely alike
can recognize each other.
An ant can easily detect if another ant is from its own colony or not.
A worker ant touches the body of the other ant to recognize it, in case
it enters the nest. It can immediately distinguish between the ones who
belong to the colony and the ones who do not by virtue of the special
colony scent it carries. If the ant who enters the nest is a stranger, the
hosts attack this uninvited guest cruelly. The inhabitants of the nest bite
the stranger’s body with their powerful jaws and make it helpless by the
formic acid, citronellal and other toxic substances that they secrete.
If the guest is from the same species but from a different colony, they
can understand that too. In this case the guest ant is accepted in the nest.
However, the guest ant is given less food until it acquires the scent of
the colony. 12

How Is the Scent of Colonies Obtained?
The source of the scents that ensure recognition by ants from the
same colony is not fully explained. However, as far as it has been dis-
covered, ants use hydrocarbons for the scent distinguishing process
among themselves.
The experiments performed have shown that ants who belong to the
same species, but to different colonies, recognize each other by hydro-
carbon differences. An interesting experiment was carried out to under-
stand this. First, the workers in one colony were washed with fluids car-
rying the scent of the ants belonging to the same species as themselves,
but from other colonies. It was observed that while the other ants of the
colony displayed aggressive behaviour to the ones who took a fluid
bath, the other colony whose scent was used for the experiment did not
react against these workers. 13

Has the Scent of Colonies Evolved?
A very significant point which has to be carefully considered with re-
gard to the scent of colonies is the matter of evolution. How do the evo-
lution mechanisms explain the fact that ants, or members of other insect
colonies (bees, termites etc.) can recognize their friends by their exclu-
sive pheromones?

Harun Yahya 37