An ant mill is an observed phenomenon in which a group of army ants, separated from the main foraging party, lose the

pheromone A pheromone () is a secreted or excreted chemical factor that triggers a social response in members of the same species. Pheromones are chemicals capable of acting like hormones outside the body of the secreting individual, to affect the behavio ...

track and begin to follow one another, forming a continuously rotating circle. This circle is commonly known as a "death spiral" because the ants might eventually die of exhaustion. It has been reproduced in laboratories and in ant colony simulations. The phenomenon is a side effect of the

self-organizing Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order and disorder, order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spont ...

structure of ant colonies. Each ant merely follows the ant in front of it, which functions until a slight deviation begins to occur, typically by an environmental trigger, and an ant mill forms. An ant mill was first described in 1921 by William Beebe, who observed a mill 370 m in circumference. It took each ant two and a half hours to make one revolution. Similar phenomena have been noted in processionary caterpillars and fish.

References

External links

YouTube video of an ant mill
Myrmecology

Mill Mill may refer to: Science and technology * Factory * Mill (grinding) * Milling (machining) * Millwork * Paper mill * Steel mill, a factory for the manufacture of steel * Sugarcane mill * Textile mill * List of types of mill * Mill, the arithmetic ...

Insect behavior {{ant-stub

See also

References

External links