# How Ants Communicate How garden ants use scent, touch and sound to lay food trails, greet nestmates, share meals and raise alarms\. By BobMorane Topic: Nature & Biology [Open the interactive Jig](https://ask.jig.com/j/a2yZ3dgkDE3u) ## Transcript ### 1. A garden full of messages We have shrunk down beside a nest of black garden ants\. Each worker is only about 4 millimetres long, yet thousands of them work together\. They do it without words: they pass messages by smell, touch, taste and tiny vibrations\. Drag anywhere to turn the garden\. Everything here is shown about 30 times bigger than life\. ### 2. Antennae: nose, tongue and fingers An ant's two antennae bend like elbows and never stop moving\. They smell, taste and touch all at once, using thousands of tiny sensors\. Most ant messages are chemicals called pheromones, and the antennae are how ants read them\. Many ants see poorly, so smell and touch matter most\. ### 3. A scout finds food A scout wanders until it finds a sugar crumb\. On the way home it touches the tip of its body to the ground, leaving a thin line of trail pheromone behind it\. The glowing dots show that invisible scent\. Real pheromone cannot be seen\. The glow is only a picture of the smell\. ### 4. Follow the scent Nestmates sniff the trail and follow it, comparing the smell on their left and right antennae to stay on course\. Every ant that comes back with food adds more scent, so a good food source gets a stronger trail\. An old trail that nobody renews slowly fades away\. In black garden ants a trail can last for about three quarters of an hour\. ### 5. Hello, nestmate When two ants meet, they tap each other with their antennae\. Every colony has its own family smell on its body, so a quick touch tells an ant who is a sister\. A visitor from another nest smells different and is turned away\. The pale ant is a visitor from a different colony\. ### 6. Sharing a meal A forager with a full crop, a kind of social stomach, passes liquid food mouth to mouth to a nestmate\. This sharing is called trophallaxis\. Along with the food it can pass chemical messages, so news and nourishment spread through the colony together\. About half of all ant species share food this way\. ### 7. Raising the alarm A startled ant releases alarm pheromone\. Instead of a line, it spreads as a cloud, and every ant it reaches becomes excited and hurries over\. When the danger passes, the scent drifts away and the colony calms down\. Garden ants can also spray formic acid to defend the nest\. ### 8. Squeaks too faint to hear Some ants, such as red ants, can squeak by rubbing a ridged file on their body\. The sound is far too faint for our ears, but nestmates feel it through their legs\. A worker trapped under a pebble squeaks for help, and others come to dig it out\. The rings show the vibration spreading through the soil\. ### 9. Many ants, one clever colony No ant gives orders\. Each one follows simple signals: a trail to strengthen, a friend to greet, a meal to share, an alarm to answer\. Together these tiny messages let a whole colony find food and stay safe\. Scent, touch, taste and vibration: four ways to say a lot without a word\.