Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucem Ferre
Can I wear an ant cologne and be accepted in their colony?
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It seems like you could
It does seem like ants can tell nestmates apart from non-nestmates (from another colony) based on smell, but it is unclear to me whether they are able to sniff out kin from non-kin.. which should be an important factor in how interactions evolve.
Edit:
Might seem so simple it's really dumb, but perhaps a combination of being unable to recognize kin coupled with some kind of constraint that inhibits the evolution of this ability is all ants need to evolve these weidly altruistic supercolonies.