How do ants communicate, and what do ants rely on to communicate?

Ants, like other insects, rely on their antennae to distinguish smells, and the first segment of the antennae is swollen and knee-shaped, making them very flexible. Because the antennae are a pair, they can distinguish the intensity of the smell, but also the direction of the smell, and the adults exchange food with each other, and learn about each other's health and nutritional status through their smells, and the food found by each other. Foraging ants have evolved to develop very complex ways of communicating, and they are able to use attractive road pheromones to direct their companions to food or water.

Ants have been extensively studied in their communication systems, and they even have algorithms related to human transportation, computers, and communication networks. Now, researchers have found that there seems to be a human-like traffic sign in the pharaoh ant's communication system, for example, they can use the traffic sign "stop" to reinforce the familiar traffic sign "go". Specifically, they mark worthless paths with a disgusting pheromone, focusing the signal on where a decision needs to be made, such as a fork in the road.

Relying on smell, the antennae are only to better capture the smell of each other or the smell left by other ants. Why do ants line up to carry food? At that time, because every ant left a certain smell wherever it walked, every ant walked along the smell, and when the ant found food, it would walk back along the smell it left behind, and attract more ants to find food according to the smell left.

The easiest thing we can observe is that ants communicate through physical contact, such as patting and caressing. Sometimes when the forefoot touches the partner's upper lip, the partner spits out liquid food**.

Ants can also communicate with sound, but the friction sound is made from the sounding board on the surface of the abdomen, and the frequency is so high that our ears cannot hear it. Ants also do not "listen", they use the detectors on their feet to pick up sound waves to cause soil vibrations. When the nest collapses, the ants trapped deep in the ground will "scream" and ask their companions to come to the rescue.

Ants mainly communicate with chemical signals. They have many glands throughout their bodies that secrete pheromones, which are the extracorporeal hormones that communicate. For example, worker ants that find food secrete pheromones at the end of their abdomen when they return to the nest to guide their own kind.

Ants are very social insects, but they do not communicate through language. They communicate through "pheromones" emitted by their bodies. When ants find food, they will spread "pheromones" on the food, and other ants will instinctively carry things back with "pheromones".

After ants die, because they still have "pheromones" on their bodies, other ants will also carry them back as food. Generally speaking, though, even if their corpses are brought back, they don't end up being eaten as food. This is because, in addition to "pheromones", ants also have their own specific things that identify odors, and things with this smell will be considered companions and will not be attacked.

Ants communicate through the antennae on their heads.