8/2/2023 0 Comments Ants death spiralFollow something blindly, and you’ll end up paying the price. ![]() This ‘Ant Death Spiral’ phenomenon is usually done by the army ant. In some cases, all of the ants in a group end up losing the pheromone trail and everybody starts following everybody else in a big confused spiral until they. This event is a strange natural occurrence that is a unique hiccup in evolutionary biology. General Did you know that ants can commit suicide Well they can actually So what drives the ants to actually ‘kill’ themselves Continue your reading to know about it more Actually, the act of committing suicide is not done by all types of ant. This happens when army ants get lost in a pheromone track. They will eventually die of exhaustion, running in their loops until they collapse. One of the craziest animal adaptations is the ant death spiral or ant mill. Unfortunately its a road to nowhere and they will not stop. Due to their inability to see the world the ants just carry on, running at full pelt along their circles their loops with the false belief that they are approaching their colony. The word ‘Death’ is in there with good reason – no ants will survive this. Over time thousands upon thousands of ants join and follow the loop, forming a large, shifting, writhing and spinning mass of legs and mandibles. The ant loops around in a circle and is now stuck in a loop, so are the ants following it and furthermore all of the ants following them. One leading ant, no different from any other, makes an error, it turns off the path and keeps going in a circle until it meets its own stream – and as we all know you should nevercross streams. This is a good system, and it works as every ant lays down a stream of these chemicals so no ants lose the scent, unfortunately things can go wrong. You see, the blind ants cannot navigate back to their colony on their own, so instead each one follows a scent trail which is a stream of chemicals coming from the ant in front saying to the ant, ‘This way!’ ![]() They are often found on pavements or other smooth surfaces in Uruguay, Argentina and other South American countries.ĭeath Spirals only affect ants especially dependent on scent trails. FACT: Ants are wonderfully strong, durable and efficient creatures, unfortunately whilst the colonies are smart, the individual ants are not, meaning that stupid things such as circular milling a.k.a ‘Death Spirals’ can occur.
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