Fun Fact: *every* house, model sized for full is, in fact, "a house for ants"
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@futurebird random ant-based question from our group chat. We're trying to determine if the internet is lying to us.
Do ants have a smell that some humans can smell and others can't? A bit like the taste of coriander being genetic but with ants.
No. I don't think it's that some people can smell ants and others can't ... it's more that there are some ants (among the many kinds of small black ants that may live in human homes) with a very distinctive smell, especially when killed (like blue cheese some will say) and other ants that look superficially similar don't have a smell.
Further some ants spray formic acid... which smells like... acid. This is less noticeable.
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F myrmepropagandist shared this topic
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No. I don't think it's that some people can smell ants and others can't ... it's more that there are some ants (among the many kinds of small black ants that may live in human homes) with a very distinctive smell, especially when killed (like blue cheese some will say) and other ants that look superficially similar don't have a smell.
Further some ants spray formic acid... which smells like... acid. This is less noticeable.
People who have encountered mostly Tapinoma sessile the "odorous house ant" will wonder why someone says ants don't smell. But every species is different.
The most common smell I've encountered is the acid like formic smell of carpenter ants.
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Fun Fact: *every* house, model-sized or full is, in fact, "a house for ants"
It's sadly true. -
It's sadly true.
sadly?
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Fun Fact: *every* house, model-sized or full is, in fact, "a house for ants"
@futurebird Well, the ants just think, "You left this stuff out for us, thanks for the contribution!"
By the way, we have both Argentine ants and the tiny tiny ones that are about a third of the size of the Argentines. When I was a kid we called them "grease ants" because they liked potato chips so much. What are the tiny ones really called?
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@futurebird Well, the ants just think, "You left this stuff out for us, thanks for the contribution!"
By the way, we have both Argentine ants and the tiny tiny ones that are about a third of the size of the Argentines. When I was a kid we called them "grease ants" because they liked potato chips so much. What are the tiny ones really called?
There are thousands of tiny species. Lasius is a good guess in the UK or North America. But there is also monomorium and many others. Get me a photo, ideally with magnification and I can tell you more.
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Fun Fact: *every* house, model-sized or full is, in fact, "a house for ants"
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@futurebird For a while we had astonishingly tiny ants living under the bathroom cabinet and coming out to eat the cat food. Individuals were only really visible when they were massed in the food dish.
Did you know that different individual ants have different temperaments? Eg some are bold, some more shy.
Even the tiny ones.
Makes me dizzy sometimes thinking about it.
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Did you know that different individual ants have different temperaments? Eg some are bold, some more shy.
Even the tiny ones.
Makes me dizzy sometimes thinking about it.
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@futurebird I dropped a cashew recently and forgot about it until I saw this. I wasn't sure what I was looking at until I got much closer.
Were they moving it?
