Why did the ants start marching in circles around the iPhone lying on the ground at the exact moment it rang? The answer to the mystery of the old viral video may lie in the peculiarities of the chemical language of ants.
A viral video, in which ants begin to walk in circles around the iPhone as soon as it receives an incoming call, took a second wind at the end of last week - as often happens with viral videos, it was posted in 2015 and was recalled again in 2018. On a new wave of interest, we give various explanations for the strange behavior of insects and choose the most plausible of them.
The authors of the ViralVideoLab channel, where the video first appeared, explain this circular march by the "electromagnetic wave" of an incoming call, but we do not really understand what they mean. Radio waves surround us (and ants) all the time, and why the insects reacted specifically to this incoming signal, and not to others filling the ether, is unclear.
Nigel Andrew, an entomologist at New England State University, points out that ants have magnetic sensors that insects use to orient themselves. Indeed, some species (for example, the South American leaf-cutting ants Atta colombica) are guided by the magnetic field using organs located in the antennae. But, firstly, it is not known what species of ants is marching in the video, and secondly, the smartphone is unlikely to create magnetic field fluctuations that can affect the behavior of even the desired species.
Most likely the matter is in the phenomenon that we have already described. It is sometimes called the "ant circle of death" and consists in the fact that ants - creatures without sight - sometimes drive themselves into the trap of smell and chemical signal systems. On the way to a place where there is a lot of food, ants secrete a special signal that should attract relatives to the abundant place. Accidentally hitting its own trail, the ant begins to walk in a circle, leaving even more odorous substance, new ants get up on the same trail. Sometimes hundreds and thousands of insects fall into the trap, and the diameter of the "ant circles" reaches hundreds of meters - we have provided the most impressive videos here. Perhaps the same trouble happened to the ants walking around the iPhone, and the formation of the circle coincided with the bell by accident.