Recently Melbourne researchers have found that green weaver ants memorise the odour of other green ants and use this to sniff out rivals and do battle.
What an interesting reveal, especially when this “whiff” propagates amongst media news frenzy and a global run on the subject, goes a-wire!
How much more could one tell about these whiff encounters?
How about if “Mother Nature” intervened by simply deploying a natural event as a situation deodoriser?
Well, I went on, investigating and soon enough, there it was … the case of two equally distant founding colonies and yes they were all engaged into another smelly battle while one of the queens was found to be “gassed out” and dying of unknown reasons.
As all the team supporters battled for whatever fragrant odours they approve the most, I stood aside and watched. Finally, the answer before my lens, If these ants and including their respective ant nests are sprayed with enough forceful water in this case natural tropical heavy downpours, the result is also somehow quite remarkable and fascinating. (hopefully I will get recognised with a “PhD” Pure hard Documentary as accuracy to my findings)
The dead queen is ousted from the nest, (rotting smells are obviously not approved) and overnight, all ants re-grouped (larvae and all) and joined as “One”, the newest and immediately sizeable founding nest.
Amazingly, after all this “smelly commotion”, just a few dead ants where found after this amalgamation.
So Green Weaver Ants may memorise their opponents by smell and do battle, but as the say goes, “Water Washes All Sins” and appropriately smells!!
Alberto Vale
Alberto Vale is an award-winning wildlife filmmaker, cinematographer, naturalist and citizen scientist based in Cairns, North Queensland, at the gateway to the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. For more than two decades, Alberto has combined wildlife cinematography with an intimate knowledge of tropical habitats, guided by a simple principle: to film wildlife successfully, you must first understand its habitat and behaviour. As founder and President of the Australian Quoll Conservancy (AQC), he has spent more than a decade conducting non-invasive field research on the endangered northern spotted-tailed quoll, developing non-invasive techniques to identify and monitor individual animals, breeding and behaviour without conventional trapping. Through WildCAM Australia®, Alberto has produced and directed internationally broadcast natural-history documentaries, including Green Tree Ants – Friend or Foe?, Quolls: Fast & Furious, and his latest production, Quollity Breeding, narrated by veteran Australian voice-over artist Katherine Kennard. Today, Alberto continues to combine cinematography, natural history and citizen science, using the camera not simply to capture wildlife, but to reveal behaviour, contribute to conservation knowledge and bring the hidden lives of Australia's native species to audiences worldwide.
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