Ant colonies are well-defended fortresses. The social insects quickly sniff out most intruders and kill them to protect their ...

Ants send messages to colony members through odor compounds that contain alkenes, chemicals that help nestmates recognize one ...

And then there’s Sceptobius lativentris. Parker’s research revealed that the adult beetles turn off their ability to produce ...

There are some pretty strange ways that animals clean themselves. While cats groom themselves with their tongues, other ...

S. lativentris beetles evade detection — and attack — by grooming the ants to harvest chemicals called cuticular hydrocarbons ...

Native ants in the forests around the recent Eaton fire had survived the heat, flames and smoke, an evolutionary survival ...

Essential oils are another natural and fragrant way to repel pests. “Some oils, such as peppermint, tea tree, and eucalyptus, ...

In their natural habitat outdoors, termites and carpenter ants are beneficial, recycling woody debris and returning nutrients ...

Ants rely on scent to recognise their comrades, and when they are exposed to common air pollutants, other members of their ...

A single queen in the tropics; large colonies in deserts; workers with uniform morphology in temperate regions; ant social structures vary according to environmental conditions. This is shown, for the ...

Ant bridges, bee hives, bird flocks, fish schools and more all demonstrate how intelligent behavior can emerge from pretty ...

This story was originally broadcast on "Sunday Morning" on July 24, 2011. When most people think about ants – if they think about them at all – they think of pests in the pantry or on a picnic. But in ...