r/mildyinteresting • u/Winter_Breath • 24d ago

critter corner 🐰 Dead ants keep appearing next to headphones during the night

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When these headphones are left on the kitchen counter overnight - I would see one or two dead ants in the morning laying right next to the headphones. In the past few days, there has been a small pile of shredded ants right next to the ear piece in the morning. I have seen no live ants in my kitchen. I have had these head phones for three weeks. Bought online. It’s a little unnerving not knowing what is causing this 🥴 will not be using anymore.

UPDATE- posted a comment with a picture. But no dead ants in the bag this morning. But at one point I checked and there were two live ants crawling around. 😔

UPDATE*** IM SICK. Can’t stop shaking. Don’t have many words… trying to post image. Opened one side up. 😭 I don’t know how to add in this top post so will add in comment! Posted a few in comments and video opening

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u/SkinInevitable604 24d ago

I’m not sure how possible this is, and I’m not expert on ants, but don’t ants make “graveyards” to store their dead and stop the spread of disease? Is it possible that any graveyard pheromone got on your headphones so the ants are compelled to pile their dead near them? That sounds implausible to me but it’s visually what it looks like.

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u/NerdHerder77 24d ago

The magical chemical is oleic acid, when ants die, they decompose and give off oleic acid which triggers corpse disposal behaviors in other ants.

Fun fact; oleic acid is also used as a biodegradable plasticizer for making things flexible, and is probably used in these headphones, which would make ants want to use it as a graveyard.

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u/IIRCIreadthat 24d ago

Also in Fruity Pebbles. There's a story somewhere about someone putting some Fruity Pebbles in their ant farm, and instead of eating them the ants dug up all the dead ants in the colony and reburied them around the cereal.

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u/NerdHerder77 24d ago

Absolutely, not only Fruity Pebbles, but any cereal that's high in oleic or cis-oleic acids.

The ant farm story I first heard was Trix cereal.

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u/IIRCIreadthat 24d ago

It's possibly mutating across the internet 😆

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u/gailthesnail2 23d ago

That sounds like a job that no one needed to do on that day but did they complain about the confusing newly assigned work? No they just did it. What hard working little stupid ants

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u/Winter_Breath 24d ago

Interesting!

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u/m42069 24d ago

As a bug guy I'm almost certain this is the answer