In the 18th century, a French biologist named Bonnet was amazed at how ants follow each other in a straight line.
He left the ants on one table and placed a lump of sugar on the other side of the table. The ants formed a line and started growing only this piece of sugar. Bonnet put his finger in the middle of their row, which broke their row and rubbed the finger a little, so that the ants in the row split into two. He observed that the ants that had been left behind by the break in the queue stopped for a while, turned around a bit and then attached the antenna on their head to the surface of the table, and then the ants started the queue again. Take the route and join the queue.
From this experiment Bonnet discovered that ants on their way release certain chemicals that guide the rest of the ants that follow. Ants have various glands in their abdomen to secrete these chemicals, and trailing ants detect these chemicals with the help of their antennae.
This experiment revealed the ability of animals to communicate with each other, which has been the subject of much research to this day. Chemicals that are released by one animal to communicate with another animal or to give it a specific signal are called "semiochemicals", and semiochemicals that are used by animals of the same species to communicate, These are called "pheromones". These chemicals were named pheromones in 1959.
Animals release pheromones to tell other animals of their species the way to eat, to call for sex, to detect danger, to mark their territory.
Especially sex pheromones are mostly released from the body of female animals, which the males of this species run away after smelling.
Animals have special glands on their bodies to secrete these chemicals, and pheromones are also present in animal urine and sweat. These pheromones affect animal physiology, animal behavior and animal development.
No authoritative reference has so far identified these pheromones in humans, although some scientists identify certain chemicals as human pheromones.