How do Ants Communicate?

How do ants communicate, first we must ask, why do they crawl in lines? Ants use pheromones (a chemical substance produced and released into the environment by an animal or an insect, affecting the behavior or physiology of others of its species) to communicate with one another. A worker ant that leaves the nest to hunt for food will leave a path of pheromones for other ants to track. If a foraging ant finds food and returns back to the nest, it leaves a stream of pheromones. Fellow worker ants pick up on the pheromone and use the same path to find the food. When the next ants retrieve more food they also leave new pheromones, making the collective quantity of pheromones stronger and more prominent to even a greater number of foraging ants. If any ants encounter problems on the route they will leave panic pheromone which tells their fellow workers that there is a problem on the pipeline, be it death or injury. Ants will also communicate by bumping into each other!

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