{"id":2805,"date":"2010-03-03T11:02:05","date_gmt":"2010-03-03T15:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=2805"},"modified":"2010-03-03T11:02:05","modified_gmt":"2010-03-03T15:02:05","slug":"ants-use-olfactory-landmarks-to-navigate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2010\/03\/03\/ants-use-olfactory-landmarks-to-navigate\/","title":{"rendered":"Ants use olfactory landmarks to navigate"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Ants, like this one in Tunisia, were found to smell in stereo and use this sense to navigate.<\/span><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

Scientists have found that the ant is the first known animal both to process the location of odors and to use that information to create a <\/span>cognitive map<\/span><\/a>. And for ants, that means their pair of antennae work overtime to recognize and process multiple odors simultaneously. In other words, it seems ants smell in stereo.<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Markus Knaden and colleagues from the Max-Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology set up olfactory landmarks near the entrance to a barely visible <\/span>desert ant<\/span><\/a> nest in Tunisia. After the ants searched for food and returned, the researchers moved the odor markers to a remote location without a nest entrance. Sure enough, the ants located the area and searched for the entrance, despite the lack of visual cues.<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rats<\/span><\/a> and even <\/span>humans<\/span><\/a> are also known to smell in stereo, but the ant is the first animal found to use the sensory information to create a detailed map of olfactory landmarks and to navigate with it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more on the in-press <\/span>study<\/span><\/a> in Animal Behaviour and watch video from the experiment in a BBC <\/span>article<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Steck, K., Knaden, M., & Hansson, B. (2010). Do desert ants smell the scenery in stereo? Animal Behaviour<\/span> DOI: 10.1016\/j.anbehav.2010.01.011<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/the12thplaya\/<\/a> \/ CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientists have found that the ant is the first known animal both to process the location of odors and to use that information to create a cognitive map. And for ants, that means their pair of antennae work overtime to recognize and process multiple odors simultaneously. In other words, it seems ants smell in stereo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[311,551,552,553,554,555],"class_list":["post-2805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research","tag-ants","tag-cognitive-map","tag-desert","tag-navigation","tag-smell","tag-stereo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}