A couple of days ago I posted photos of a beautiful gazania cultivar, Big Kiss - Orange Flame. This gazania isn’t nearly as flambouant but that’s OK because the subject of these photos is that ant. Ants, like bees evolved from wasps and they are typically social insects with elaborate communication systems.
Most ants don’t see that well but their distinctive elbow antanae can detect sound, vibration and chemicals called pheronomes. When a forager ant finds a food source it returns to the nest and sprays pheronomes all along the path. When it gets back to the nest it touches attenae with all the other forager ants and they follow the pheronome trail back to the food, spraying more pheromones all the way. Soon the trail is like super highway with dozens of ants going backward and forward. When the food source is exhausted they stop spraying pheronomes and they go back to the nest and touch antenae again to share the bad news.
Ants produce many different kinds of pheronomes and they serve many purposes. Modern science is beginning to unravel this form of chemical communication, however, when they touch antenae they also communicate through vibrations and sounds. So far it’s a case of ‘Ne comprenez-vous’ and we haven’t decoded these forms of conversation. Maybe they’re talking about us. I wonder, are they saying nice things? For some reason, I’m very uncomfortable with this question.