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I'm here sitting on the floor and there are some ants running around. I have eaten ants and smelled dead ones so I know what the smell is. The scent I sniff is like the smell of dead ants but a bit more chemically. Has anyone else done this?
Interesting question. I assumed what you're smelling is formic acid, and I recall reading that some people are capable of smelling this and others aren't due to a genetic quirk.
A quick Google led me to the below article about a species of ant found in North America that's called the "odorous house ant" and how a couple of entomologists tried to figure out what they actually most smelled like. Apparently, since there are something like a thousand different species of ants in North America and many have distinctive scents, scientists often squish one and sniff when they're trying to identify which species they're looking at.
The interesting and highly useful things you can learn thanks to Google and the internet never ceases to amaze me.
https://www.wired.com/2015/06/ants-smell-like-blue-cheese-pine-sol/
There’s nothing I hate more than the smell of ladybugs. And every time I bring up how I hate their smell I get weird looks.
Go smell a ladybug the next time you get the chance, they reek, I need my hatred of ladybug stink to become mainstream
"Go smell a ladybug..."
But make sure the critter doesn't fly up in your nose while you're sniffing.
You're not the only one to have notice the stink, and it seems they taste just as bad. The link below is to an article about how a few ladybugs in a grape harvest can make wine taste nasty.
As with anything in nature that's brightly coloured and has an eye-catching pattern, it's obviously a defence mechanism. Once an insectivore tastes one ladybug, they know never to eat another.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-03/acs-lmb031207.php
Nice trolling. i remember one time cleaning out an old basement and vacuuming up tons of those spindly cellar spiders. there ended up being so many piling up in the vac bag that it actually started to smelled like a dead animal was inside there.
I mean, ants do have a smell to them. I have an ant farm, and it does contain a bit of an acidic odor in a way.