It appears that ants in Argentina have mysterious ways of detecting if their fellows are deceased or not. A study in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science shows that when ants die, their bodies activate a sort of "dead man's switch" that is activated when the ant dies. This "switch" causes the ant to stop producing certain identifying chemicals that indicate to its hive mates that it is alive, identifying it as dead and causing its mates to carry it off away from the hive.
At first, scientists believed that ants simply reacted to the release of fatty acids and other such chemical cues from decomposition to determine weather or not their fellows were alive or not. Though further observation showed that ants carried away the deceased within an hour, way too soon for decomposition to even begin taking place. Thus led scientists to examine even further and discover that in life, ants produce two different compounds on their feelers which indicate that they are alive, and when these ants die the production of these two chemicals shuts off, indicating their death. It is interesting to see how chemical reactions are important to even the smallest of life forms.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
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