• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

People Are Learning Others Can Smell Ants And It’s Freaking Them Out

August 3, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

Scientists of the world, we have a request: please investigate the claim that some people can detect the smell of ants while others can’t. It’s painfully urgent. 

Everyone now and again, a viral post will go around in which some people claim they can smell ants. In one TikTok video sharing the apparent fact, the comments became engulfed in heated debate:

Advertisement

“My ex would say that they smelled spicy,” one person replied.

“Dead ants smell like chemicals kinda like bug poison,” said another.

“THIS IS A PRANK THEY DON’T SMELL,” one TikToker protested.

Curious about this phenomenon, we carried out a wildly unscientific poll on the platform formerly known as Twitter involving over 700 respondents at the time of publishing this story. The results suggest that around 20 percent of respondents claim they can detect the odor of an ant. The remaining 80 percent said they couldn’t smell ants – and were deeply confused.  

Advertisement

When asked what the smell was, there was a range of responses:

“They’re like an earthy, stink bug odor,” one person commented. 

“Weird. chemically smell. like something used in a bottle that says WARNING,” reads another comment. 

“They smell a bit like rust, a sour rusty odor, is the best way I can describe it,” one respondent replied.

ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.

Fortunately, some entomologists have looked into the phenomenon of ant sniffing. In 2015, a study investigated the smell of the odorous house ant (Tapinoma sessile), one of the most widespread ant species in North America. Clint Penick, an ant expert at North Carolina State University, asked hundreds of people to smell a box of T. sessile and fill out a survey on what they thought the ants smelled like.

The most common answer was reportedly blue cheese. Other commonly reported descriptions cited by the study were a chemical-like cleaning spray and rotting coconuts.

Digging deeper into this curious observation, Penick and his collaborator Adrian Smith managed to identify the chemicals that were responsible: methyl ketones. It turns out, odorous house ants and blue cheese both have this chemical. When coconuts go rotten, they also grow a blue mold that produces methyl ketones.

Advertisement

It’s evident that other species of ants also produce equally pungent-smelling scents too. When threatened, carpenter ants will spray formic acid, a caustic chemical with antimicrobial properties that smells like vinegar. Likewise, citronella ants are named after the sour citrus smell they produce to ward off predators.

But what about the claim that some people can detect the scents but others can’t? Well, that’s where things get hazier. 

Some put it down to genetics, arguing that some people lack a certain gene for detecting the smell of formic acid, a bit like the gene that makes cilantro taste of soap to some poor souls. However, there’s not much evidence to back up that claim. Another explanation might be the species of ant that live in your region. As mentioned, some ants are stinkier than others. 

Perhaps, as others have suggested, people who believe they can’t smell ants just haven’t tried hard enough. 

Advertisement

This important investigation shall continue…

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Tennis-Scrappy Sakkari survives gruelling three-setter to beat Andreescu
  2. Cricket-NZ players reach Dubai after ‘specific, credible threat’ derailed Pakistan tour
  3. Warby Parker makes it clear that direct listings are unicorn-friendly
  4. Bad Day? Watch Some Animals Giving Interviews To A Tiny Microphone

Source Link: People Are Learning Others Can Smell Ants And It's Freaking Them Out

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Earth’s Energy Imbalance Is More Than Double What It Should Be – And We Don’t Know Why
  • We May Have Misjudged A Fundamental Fact About The Cambrian Explosion
  • The Shoebill Is A Bird So Bizarre That Some People Don’t Even Believe It’s Real
  • Colossal’s “Dire Wolves” Are Now 6 Months Old – And They’ve Doubled In Size
  • How To Fake A Fossil: Find Out More In Issue 36 Of CURIOUS – Out Now
  • Is It True Earth Used To Take 420 Days To Orbit The Sun?
  • One Of The Ocean’s “Most Valuable Habitats” Grows The Only Flowers Known To Bloom In Seawater
  • World’s Largest Digital Camera Snaps 2,104 New Asteroids In 10 Hours, Mice With 2 Dads Father Their Own Offspring, And Much More This Week
  • Simplest Explanation For “Anomalous” Signals Coming From Underneath Antarctica Ruled Out
  • “Lizard Shampoo” And Pagan Texts Suggest “Dark Age” Medicine Wasn’t So Dark After All
  • Japanese Macaques May Mourn Their Dead – As Long As They’re Not Maggot-Infested
  • This Is What You’d Hear If You Listened To Voyager’s Golden Record NASA Sent To Interstellar Space
  • RFK Jr’s New Vaccine Advisors Just Recommended Fall Flu Vaccines – But There’s A Catch
  • Controversial World-First Project To Create Human DNA From Scratch Takes First Steps
  • Humans Weren’t The First Species To Travel Around The Moon. They Lost This Race To An Unexpected Animal
  • When You Hack A Shark, You’re Exploiting A Glitch Billions Of Years In The Making
  • Wellness Whales, A New Blood Type, And A DJ Set From Space
  • Hate Flying Ants? We Used To Have Ones The Size Of Hummingbirds
  • ‘Tis The Season To See Titan Cast A Shadow On Saturn – Especially If You Are In America
  • World’s Bravest Vets Put Full Metal Dental Crown On A Bear For The First Time
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version