How to confuse an ant !!

Circle drawn with a marker around an ant confuses it as it moves around trying to avoid the drawn line. As more lines are drawn, the ant keeps avoiding them.

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• ant
• ants
• sensing
• chemical
• chemicals
• marker
• lines
• confused
• funny
• insects

[chimpanity]

Its Okay I get confused the same way, I was walking down the street and some guy painted a yellow double line by me and i've been stuck in the middle of the street for weeks now. thankfully my neighbor lets me use his laptop from time to time.

[sr5813]

I think that's caused by the irritant chemicals in the marker's ink, maybe alcohol

[feichen1997]

LOL

[SassyVanah]

Oh for fuck's sake. It's not toxic to the ant, and it depends more on the pen than the ant. The same pheromones ants and termites use to distinguish one another's clans are found in ball point pen ink. Depending on the brand of the pen, the pheromones may smell different. Had you tried to used different pen brands, you may have found one that the ant followed instead of avoiding. The pen you were using made the ant try to avoid another ant's territory.

[englandinacan]

No it isnt.

Try it with a pencil, try it with a normal pen.

Even try it with a circle printed out on a piece of paper.

Still works.

[HeavyMetalBeaner]

or maybe the marker

[humby123]

I see it eventually broke through. I tried this once but it didn't really work. Maybe it depends on the kind of ant.

[londonjimbob]

its trying to aviod the marker as its toxic.. nothing special or clever there...