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WHAT PHEROMONES ARE AND HOW THEY WORK.

   Pheromones are smelly substances produced by animals or any set of living beings; they are emitted and dispersed through the air and affect the behavior of other animals of their own species, being a a very ancient communication way. The way pheromones work is similar to that used by the hormones in the body. They carry specific chemical messages from some certain cells to other cells and cause certain actions. There are different classifications of pheromones: sexual, deterrent, track, alarm pheromones, etc. Pheromones used for pest control are the sexual ones, emitted by the females to  call the male for mating.

    The insects are animals that regularly use pheromones for this purpose, by giving out a sexual pheromone specific to every species. Males fly around until finding the appropriate smell to identify their females. Today the traps contain pheromones to capture harmful insects. With the sexual pheromones of other undesirable insects we spray all over the infected areas to confuse the males seeking females of other species.

The pheromone traps are used to attract the males.

     The insects living in groups, like ants, use different pheromones to indicate where the food is, if there are enemies around or if they must fly away. Besides they possess other pheromones to identify their larvae in the dark of the nest; some invertebrates have copied the code, as the killing bug that leaves traces of false odor and eats the ants that follow the scent. A wide variety of beetles, spiders, centipedes or parasites produce pheromones out of ant larvae feeding and living among them without the fear of being discovered.

Many insects indicate different situations using differrent pheromone.

     Pheromones are also common among mammals, marking their territory limits, females attract males for mating, detecting intruders on their territory by the pheromones they emit and identify other individuals of the same species, including they recognize the closest ones. Recent discoveries proved that primates pheromones too, play an important role. When puberty arrives humans acquire a certain smell of sweat; this suggests that people's behavior can change due to  certain pheromones.

     This not only happens to animals; there are some tropical orchids that produce sexual hormones of some wasps, so the males try to mate with flowers that identify the females of their species and thus carrying the pollen from one flower to another.

       
If you want to read our other articles on pheromone traps, pine processionary as well as some curiosities on these insects,

 click below.