군대 개미 회오리 : ant death cicle

[세이지]

Slayer ants circle pit

Ant Death Spiral

Ants secrete a pheromone called Trail pheromones so it can lead members of its own species toward a food source. Like a cube of Borg drones that's been separated from the collective, these army ants were somehow separated from the main foraging party and they lost the pheromone trail and began to follow one another, forming a continuously rotating circle. The ants that are stuck in the "antnado" will usually die of exhaustion. Luckily for these ants, they only swirled for about half hour and then another half hour later, not an ant could be seen. It's a real-life Antnado! (yes, I'm claiming to be the first one to coin the name).

Ants of various species can be seen in Costa Rica streaming through the jungle in huge numbers. They can do this by producing pheromones that act as a guide for moving enormous numbers of ants to a specific destination. Basically, they smell the ant in front of them. Very rarely a group of ants gets lost from the main group and they end up following each other in a circle. Eventually they die from exhaustion. You can see the dead ones piling up in the middle.
The moral is- pick your leaders carefully.

This video was captured in Guatemala, back in 2007, where I was staying with friends for a youth camp at a small resort. The ants circle took place outside the eatery, after breakfast. The phenomenon only lasted a few minutes; when I returned, about an hour later, most of the ants had already found their way into the nearby plants.

What's going on?
Each ant follows the pheromone trail of the ant in front of it, the trails have gotten looped around and now every ant is endlessly following its neighbor. More information on the 27/09/12 update.