How do ants get home, and how do ants find their way home when they get lost?

If the students pay close attention to the ant's crawling posture, they will find that the end of its abdomen is intermittently touching the ground. It turns out that the abdomen of ants can secrete a substance, called tracking hormone, usually when the ants come out of the hole, they are generally lined up in a column in an orderly manner, and the ants in front secrete this tracking hormone with a symbolic smell, which is emitted on the road while walking, leaving traces, and the ants walking behind smell this smell, they can follow closely, even if there are individual ants temporarily left behind, they can also move along the same road without getting lost. The smell of this tracker became a signpost for them.

When you come back, you still follow this sign to return to the cave.

If a worker ant discovers a food source, it releases tracker hormone on the way back; If it doesn't find food, it doesn't leave a tracker on its path. Therefore, the more abundant the food, the more ants are attracted, and the more trackers are left on the road. When they run out of food, they don't leave trackers behind on the way back; Trackers are volatile substances that disappear quickly if not strengthened.

Moreover, tracking hormone is population-specific, so it is not to be confused with other nests and other species of ants. Obviously it's a survival adaptation.

If you do an experiment and repeat your fingers on the route the ants take several times to cut off their route markers, the ants will be in a mess and go around in circles. After a few minutes, it will be possible to rearrange a neat battle line. From these, it can be seen that these instinctive behaviors of ants are entirely based on the smell of tracking hormone.

Find the smell with your sense of smell!

When ants pass by, they leave a smell on the ground, and the tentacles are the nose, and when they smell the smell, they can go home. He panics when you clear the way he came, and he basically can't find a home if he gets farther away

Ants come home by sniffing the pheromones they secrete when they go home.

Ants are social creatures. Spread the world in the warm weather. They sometimes go out far in search of food.

Returning home from a long distance is not an easy task, but a small ant does not get lost. So how exactly did the ants find their way home, and we decided to find out through experimentation. We put forward some hypotheses about the ant pathfinding method and designed the verification schemes separately.

1 Suppose an ant uses its antennae to find its way: choose an ant that is about to return to the nest, pick it up and use tweezers to remove its antennae, and then put it back in place to see if it can still follow the team back to the nest.

2 Suppose the ants use the surrounding scenery to find their way: while a group of ants are on their way back to the nest, use a simple screen to enclose them, and then use a flat plate to place it very low above the returning ants so that they cannot see the sky and the surrounding scenery. Under such conditions, if the ants can still return the same way, it means that the ants do not necessarily rely on the surrounding scenery to recognize the limb pathway.

3 Suppose the ants leave a scent on the road they have climbed on, and use the smell to identify the road when they return: on the road surface on which the ants have crawled, draw a line with your finger to disrupt the continuous scent. If the ant can still go back the way it came, it means that the ant is not using the smell left by itself to find the way, and if the ant is confused for a short time, it means that the ant may be using the smell to identify the direction.

Through experiments and research, we have come to the following conclusions: ants are very keen on vision, and not only the scenery on land is used by ants to identify directions, but also the position of the sun and the sunlight shining from the blue sky can be used by ants to identify the direction of returning to the nest. In addition, in addition to relying on their eyes, ants can also recognize their way based on smells.

Some ants leave a scent on the ground they crawl on, and as long as they follow it when they return, they will not go astray. There are also ants that do not leave any special smell on the road they crawl on, but they can remember the smell of natural gas on the road to and from them, so they will not get lost. Because ants have the ability to recognize their way, even if the sky is thick with clouds, or when the smell on the ground is destroyed, as long as there are still some clues that can be used, they will still find the nest, but it is just a few more detours.

Writing ideas: Write about the people and things that the little ant met when he came home, and explain that he should write a narrative and write a fairy tale.

Text: A small ant went to find food, because a strong wind blew it into a forest, and it had to find its way home.

The little ant saw the elephant walking by, and he hurriedly asked, "Mr. Elephant, do you know that my home is in **?" ”

The elephant said, "I'm sorry, I don't know where your home is." ”

The little ant walked to the river, and a few lotus flowers bloomed in the river, so he went to ask the lotus: "Sister lotus, do you know that my home is in **?" ”

"I don't know," said Lotus, "but my boat can take you home." You wait. ”

The little ant waited and waited, and waited for a long time, and the boat finally came. The boat floated to the lotus leaf, and the little ant climbed onto the boat. The boat really sent the little ant out of the forest, and the little ant went home.

The little ant walked home, but his parents were not at home. It turned out that they couldn't find the little ants and went to the public security bureau to report the case. The little ant found the public security bureau, and as soon as their parents saw the little ant, they hugged the little ant.

Mom said, "My son, we miss you to death." Where have you been?

The little ant also said, "Mom and Dad, I miss you too." The little ant told his parents about his experience, and his parents said repeatedly, "You are awesome! ”

The little ant family went home happily.