Can ants smell?

Ants have four to five times more odor receptors than most other insects, a team of researchers has discovered.

The research team, led by Lawrence Zwiebel at Vanderbilt, recently completed the first full map of olfactory system that provides ants with their sense of taste and smell. They found the industrious insects have genes that make about 400 distinct odorant receptors, special proteins that detect different odors. By comparison, silk moths have 52, fruit flies have 61, mosquitoes range from 74 to 158 and the honeybee has 174.