The other day when I was in the bathroom, I saw some ants on the door's surface. I saw this one ant walked across the door's surface then at the bottom part of the door, I saw another ant. Its very interesting to see how ants walk. They walk quite fast for such a small creature.
So, the two ants met and their antennae touched each other. It lasted a couple of seconds then they continued walking. I was quite fascinated by ants so I googled them and these was what I got.
Ants communicate with each other using pheromones, sounds and touch. The pheromones act as a chemical signal. The paired antennae provide information about direction and intensity of scent. They leave a pheromone trails on the ground surface that they walked through so that other ants may follow the trails. If they found food, they will bring the food back to the colony and along the way they will add the pheromone trails to indicate that the trail has food. When the food finished, the ants will stop following the trail and the scent will slowly disappear.
Ants are quite smart creature because for example if a route to food is blocked by an obstacle, they will leave the route and search a new route. If an ant is successful, it leaves a new trail marking the shortest route on its return. Successful trails are followed by more ants, identifying better route and gradually found the best routes.
The pheromones that ants emit are used for more purpose than just making trails. A crushed ant will emit an alarm pheromones that sends nearby ants into an attack frenzy and attracts more ants to help it. Several ant species use 'propoganda pheromones' to fight with enemy ants. Propoganda pheromone is a pheromone to can cause enemy to get confused and make them fight among themselves. Source from wikipedia.
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