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Sensory organs are the windows to the world. They decide how the outside world is perceived – and ants perceive the world differently than we do. The senses, therefore, determine how ant find their way around and how they communicate with each other.

Ant Senses

By far the most important “sense organ” of an ant is the feeler scourge. With closed eyes it can still do a lot – without feelers it is helpless. Strictly speaking, it is not a sensory organ, but the carrier of a multitude of different sensory cells (e.g. 3,000 in ants), often in combination with sensory bristles. They are used to perceive smell, taste, temperature, humidity, and air currents.

A sensor consists of a long shaft and the flagellum carrying sensory cells. Most of the sensor bristles react to “bending” and are probably tactile organs. Odor sensors are the second most common group of bristles. Ants communicate via gaseous chemical signals. Friend and foe are not recognized by their appearance, but by their smell.

It is also astonishing that ants can distinguish temperature fluctuations of 0.25°C with their sensors. The importance of the antennae can be recognized by their frequent cleaning. The sensor is carefully pulled through a cleaning apparatus on the front leg. The cleaning device is then cleaned with the mouthparts (Fig. 14b). The cleaning apparatus consists of a movable, combed spur and another comb on the opposite edge of the 1st foot link.

Ants usually have compound eyes on both sides of the head and 3 point eyes on the forehead. The exact function of the dot eyes is unclear. They are particularly well developed in winged sex animals and optically-oriented workers. A compound eye consists of a mosaic of individual eyes, the number of which varies between 3 and 1,300 in different ant species.

The resolving power depends on the number of these individual eyes. This means that they only see a large picture, but they are excellent at perceiving movement. Also, the color impressions are not comparable with the unsatisfactory ones. Like bees, ants are red-blind but see ultraviolet.

Ants do not have ears, so they cannot perceive sound. Nevertheless, some species of ants make shrill noises or knocking signals in the service of communication. The resulting vibrations of the ground are perceived through the ants’ legs.

Orientation

If workers leave the nest to search for food, they must find their way back to the nest. For orientation, they use terrain maps, the position of the sun, and scent tracks. To do this, amateurs must be able to learn. This not only applies to memorizing terrain marks, but also to recognizing different scents or orienting oneself according to the position of the sun.

When orienting itself according to a light source, the ant memorizes the angle between its walking direction and the light direction. If you change the position of the sun for a harvest ant by covering it and reflecting its image through a mirror, the ant can be directed in different directions.

If you put a light-proof box over an ant returning home and keep the animal captive for several hours, the ant will keep the right path after its release, although the position of the sun has changed. Ants thus calculate the correct direction of return from the past time and the new position of the sun.

The mirror trick does not work for other ants (e.g. forest ants), which often live in cloud-covered latitudes. They only need to see parts of the sky to determine the position of the sun. The sky, which appears to us to be a bright blue, is richer in information for ants. Air molecules force the light to oscillate in certain planes. This results in a polarization pattern in the sky, which changes with the position of the sun.

Many species of ants use glandular secretions of the abdomen to lay scent tracks as an orientation aid for themselves and their nestmates. Where we see ant trails, there is also a scent trail. If you wipe it out, the ants bounce back as if in front of an invisible wall. When exploiting short-lived sources of proximity, the trace pheromone evaporates quickly, whereas in real ant trails the scent trace is effective over weeks. A more closed observation about ant in Hindi

Communication

An animal state only functions when there is communication. How the flow of information in the ant colony works is of interest even to traffic planners and logistics companies. While touch and vibration can only be used in special situations.

In the case of a disease caused by the immune system, communication through chemical signals (pheromones) is of paramount importance. Scent substances are produced in a number of different glands and are released in different combinations and concentrations as a fragrance bouquet. Research into the decoding of ant languages is still in its infancy.

The nest smell is responsible for the recognition of nestmates. This scent uniform is composed of different, hierarchically acting components. The influence of the queen is the most effective, less effective are the innate scent differences of the workers, and the influence of food and nest substrate is the weakest, but still important.

Alarm pheromones trigger a species-specific and situation-related attack or escape behavior. An optimal chemical alarm must be limited in space and time, therefore these pheromones are quickly volatilized. Otherwise, every small disturbance would permanently mobilize the entire colony. In the skin, the defense secretions (e.g. formic acid in forest ants, pine gland secretion in the shiny black wood ant) also function as alarm pheromones, whereby the “transmitter” controls and reinforces the desired behavior by emitting further pheromones: Locating, promoting aggression at the danger spot, inhibiting aggression towards oneself. Interesting fact do ants sleep. Read this.

The transfer of food from the mouth to mouth is triggered by touch stimuli (Fig. 1d). Many ant guests take advantage of this by imitating the tactile signals to beg for food. Even experimentally this can be achieved by touching with hair.

Various nodular ants, such as Myrmica, emit shrill sounds when they cannot move freely. Ants register these high-frequency “cries for help” as ground vibrations. With a bit of luck, you can hear the chirping by holding the ant to your ear with tweezers. A shrill edge on the postpetiole rubs against a shrill field located on the 1st abdominal segment and provided with numerous rips.

Wood-dwelling horse ants like Camponotus herculean and Campono- us ligniperda give knocking signals in case of disturbance. The body is used as a seesaw, with the head and abdomen alternately hitting the ground.

Productive food-sources

The guided woman signals her presence to the guide by constantly touching her abdomen. If the contact is lost, the guide waits and produces a scent signal. Here, touch and scent signals are combined. The comparison of different ant species reveals a series of developments from the simple tandem run, to the tandem run with an orientation track laid by the scouts, to the scent track with a follow-up request by the scouts, to the continuous track that functions without request or guidance.

With a nest-move, the inexperienced nest-mates are carried without further ado. The animals pack themselves at the jaws on that occasion and the carried one takes a typical posture. With the shed ants it curls up under the head of the wearer – with the knot ants it is carried upside down.