Is the Ant Dead or Not? By Marielle

"Hey, I'm Dead!"  The Story of the Very Lively Ant

by Robert Krulwich in Krulwich on Science, All Things Considered, April 1, 2009

Have you ever wondered how ants know when other ants are dead?  Well, E. O. Wilson can tell you how.  He figured out that when an ant dies in the colony, if it is not squished, then the other ants just pass by it as if it were a piece of dirt.   This happens for two days, and then the dead ant makes this odor that is very stinky, and so the next ant that passes by notices that that is a problem, picks it up, and brings it to the ant graveyard, which is a pile of dead ants.  

The reason that he started this research is because he knows that most animals do not communicate as humans do.  Humans communicate with talking, seeing, feeling, etc.  But some animals communicate with smelling, touching, echolocation, etc.  But the ant, for one, is smelling.  The ant has little glands and each one has a different smell, so to communicate, instead of talking, they squirt the gland that has a certain smell of what they want to say, and then the other ant immediately knows what she is trying to say.  

Since the ants have a certain smell for things they want to say, Ed Wilson wanted to see if he could make a dead ant smell.  He tried a series of different stenches, and he found that oleic acid was the one.  That alone said to an ant, "I'm dead."  Just for an experiment, Ed Wilson put a few drops of oleic acid onto an ant that so unfortunately walked by.  Right when she went back into the colony, an ant picked her up with her legs kicking wildly around and took her to the giant pile of dead ants and threw her in.  The ant quickly climbed out and bathed herself like a dog.  After a while, she went back into the colony, and pretty soon after that, another ant picked her up and threw her in the pile of dead ants.  The same process happened again an again for about one or two hours, until the ant cleaned herself like crazy and rid herself of the dead stench.  She went back into the colony and everything was fine.  Ed Wilson said he did feel guilty, but he also said that "I was trying to see if I could create the 'Living Dead.'"  

Even though I believe it was a tad cruel to do that to the poor little ant, it was a little bit cool that he could make the ant seem like it was dead to the other ants.