Chemical Communication
Tate Neilsen
Chemical communication is one of the many ways animals communicate with each other. Animals use pheromones, chemicals released by living organisms, to send information to other organisms of the same species via scent or taste. Pheromones are released in response to stress, alarm, danger,or sexual fertility. Animals often use smell to find prey and identify other animals.
Territory Marking
The short-snouted elephant shrew marks its territory using the scent glands located behind its ears. Marking its territory serves two purpose for the short-snouted elephant shrew: establishing territories and alerting their mate of their location.
Image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Bushveld-elephant-shrew.jpg
Mate Above
A strange behavior of the three toed sloth is that it climbs from its tree to the ground to defecate. A reason it may engage in this risky behavior is to leave a scent signal that indicates to mates it is located in the tree above the pile of dung.
Help!
In response to danger or stress, ants release a chemical signal that is sensed by ants nearby. In response, the nearby ants travel towards the scent and work to help the endangered nest mate.
Image: http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/ants.jpg
Who Are You?
Dogs have information pheromones that give information about its self. By smelling another dog, it can be determined what the other dog ate last, if they are in heat, their level of dominance, and their level of health.
Smelling with.. the tongue?
Female snakes produce a pheromone to signal to male snakes when she is ready to mate. Though snakes have nostrils, pheromones are detected with the tongue. The snake places its tongue on another snake to "smell" the pheromone. Once the female snake has mated, it produces a different pheromone to indicate she is no longer available.
Image: https://evolutionforskeptics.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/snake.jpg