THURSDAY, May 1, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- You may suspect it, but ants know it for certain -- work stinks.
Stanford University biologists say the ant's extraordinary sense of smell is the reason ant colonies are so well-organized and work with such efficiency.
If you observe an ant colony, you'll see thousands of worker ants dutifully going about their business. Some will be digging nests while others gather food or tend to the young. The ants will switch jobs to meet the everchanging needs of the colony.
All these chores are done without any direction or supervision. And ants, who have brains the size of a poppy seed, accomplish all this thanks to their remarkable sense of smell.
For example, the Stanford scientists found that when patroller ants return to their nest, they emit a distinctive body odor that tells the worker ants to go out and forage for food. The research appears in the May 1 issue of Nature.
This new insight is the most recent to emerge from a 20-year field study of red harvester ants.
Learning more about these kinds of interactions and the subtle cues that let small-brained social insects such as ants construct large, well-functioning communities isn't something of interest only to biologists.
The ant colony model may also provide ideas for engineers trying to solve intricate problems in computer science, network communications and robotics.
"Ant colonies offer an example of a system in which the component parts -- ants -- are fairly simple and there is no hierarchical control, yet somehow the whole colony performs complex, integrated behavior," study co-author Deborah M. Gordon says in a news release.
More information
Here's where you can learn more about ants.
