Lisa:

I have ants in my house that (A) I can’t get rid of, they almost laugh at those litle plastic traps, and (B) when I smush them, I smell this cleaner smell. Why is that? I noticed it when squished one kind of close and thought I was crazy so the 3rd time I just smelled the dead ant and it was pretty potent. I know this sounds weird but my husband thought I was crazy when I told him what I smelled. So I smelled it. What is it that makes them smell like that?

Getting rid of ants can be tricky. Ants communicate using three main methods, (a) tactile, (b) auditory, and (c) olfactory. Ants use pheromones and odors to identify fellow members of the colony and to identify trails to and from the nest. If your plastic traps are not in the right areas they could be less effective in attracting the ants to them. I actually have never used those plastic traps, but instead have tried to identify the main pathways or trails the ants are using (especially if there are points of entry into your house) and have lined a wall of dish soap along the path. Ok, so actually I have 2 ant stories where I have used soap. One was in an apt and I noticed the ants coming through a crack between the door and kitchen and they were coming up to the kitchen sink for whatever they could get of leftovers. So, I put a line of the soap on the ground by the door (like a baracade) and lined the side of the sink with dish soap. At the end of the day when I cleaned up the kitchen I washed the sink area up, usually having to clean up dead ant bodies, and then would repeat with the soap treatment the next day. I only had to do this for a couple days before the ants got the hint and left. Now if the colony is actually nesting in your home (like carpenter ants) then you would have a much bigger problem on your hands and may have to call an exterminator. It might help to identify what kind of ants you have in order to best combat them. The second time I battled ants was while in grad school, during winter. A bunch of crazy ants got the crazy idea to invade my blow fly colony and steal their sugar water. In the process they also killed many-a-fly…and that was no good for someone who was using those flies for experiments. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any main trail, they were everywhere, literally in the thousands. So in this case I filled a spray bottle with soap and water and sprayed the ants that were outside of the blow fly cage and just put a line of soap around the outside of the cage to prevent new ones from going in. After a couple of days of spraying soap water around the floor and cabinets of the lab and killing the ants I could see they finally went away.

For the second part of your question about the smell, well, you are not crazy. Ants belong to the insect family “Formicidae”. That odor you smell is a chemical from their poison gland called formic acid. Formic acid smells like vinegar, I think, its been a while since I have smelled a crushed ant. Its also the same chemical in stinging nettle, if you have ever come into contact with that plant. Ants use the chemical for defence against other ants and predators.

Good luck

Trackback URI | Comments RSS