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by rubberstamp
3490 days ago
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May be ants are just cleaning so that it wont stink? Coating something else other than an ant and placing it near an ant crowd might answer that I guess. If they carry it away, then they are cleaning stink rather than getting rid of dead ant. |
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They don't think in terms of "this is stinky/dead", more like "this smells like oleic acid so it goes over there."
FWIW this was tested by putting oleic acid on bits of paper: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6400/112aff930da566312315ef...
They would sometimes carry it to the burial site and other times they would carry it back and treat it as a food item. The "decision" is said to be based on the current "social context" (read: goals of the ant or colony).
Also a note on that poor ant they coated with the stuff; she cleaned herself off and was back to work after an hour or two.