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Ant smell (mander.xyz)

submitted 5 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[–] tja@sh.itjust.works 113 points 5 months ago (76 children)

Wait, is that true? Is someone able to smell ants?

[–] jabathekek@sopuli.xyz 30 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (5 children)

https://academic.oup.com/ae/article/61/2/85/1756864

https://www.livescience.com/why-ants-smell-weird

However, the sense of smell in humans is far less developed, and there has been recent controversy over what, exactly, the odorous house ant smells like. This species belongs to a large group of ants whose members are thought to smell like blue cheese (Forney and Markovetz 1971) [link is direct 3.0 mb .pdf download from elsevier], yet numerous online sources report their odor as “rancid butter,” “cleaning solution,” or, most commonly, “rotten coconuts.”

Specifically, the house ~~hippo~~ ant.

*The actual factual paper was actually literally published in 2015, no cap.

[–] Deebster@programming.dev 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

At the same time, Penick had people rate what they thought the ant smelled like. Most people said blue cheese, but some thought it smelled like rotted coconut. So Penick rotted a coconut in his backyard and found a mold growing on it that, sure enough, is the same mold (Penicillium roqueforti) that's used to produce blue cheese. Another mystery, solved.

So American house ants, rotten coconuts and blue cheese all smell the same. Life is weird.

[–] RavenFellBlade@startrek.website 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Uh oh. They smell like blue cheese? That means they smell delicious!

[–] PhatInferno@midwest.social 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Thats what i was thinking, i love bluecheese!

[–] RavenFellBlade@startrek.website 2 points 5 months ago

Especially Blue Stilton. By far my favorite cheese!

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