An ant mill is an observed phenomenon in which a group of army ants , separated from the main foraging party, lose the pheromone track and begin to follow one another, forming a continuously rotating circle. This circle is commonly known as a “ death spiral ” because the ants might eventually die of exhaustion . It has been reproduced in laboratories and in ant colony simulations. [ 1 ]
The phenomenon is a side effect of the self-organizing structure of ant colonies . Each ant merely follows the ant in front of it, which functions until a slight deviation begins to occur, typically by an environmental trigger, and an ant mill forms. [ 2 ] An ant mill was first described in 1921 by William Beebe , who observed a mill 370 meters (1,210 ft) in circumference. It took each ant two and a half hours to make one revolution. [ 3 ] Similar phenomena have been noted in processionary caterpillars and fish. [ 4 ]
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