How Do Ants Make Graveyards?
WouterUnlike humans, ants do not have graveyards. They carry the dead to a midden, a structure where they dump their waste.
The ants carry the dead to the midden because of a smell. The ants react to the oleic acid smell. In addition, ants react to chemicals, such as pheromones, which they use to find food sources. They also use chemicals to react to dead comrades, such as the scent of their ant corpses.
According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ants do not bury the dead. Instead, they take the dead ants to a midden, a structure that acts as a graveyard. This is more scientific than human burial practices.
In the study, researchers exposed carer ants to germs. They also dripped fungus spores from graveyards onto carer ants. They found that workers were more resistant to the fungus spores if they had been exposed to graveyards. This was also true for workers in the wild.
The study team used agent-based computational models to study the collective behavior of insects. These models are designed to understand how ants make decisions.
The model also describes how the number of corpses increases, how they get detected, and how often they are dropped. Researchers found that ants drop corpses at a rate that increases with the number of corpses that are detected. If a nest-mate is not nearby, the ant will not drop a corpse.
