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Practice Reading: Fill in the Blanks (Dropdown) ID: #51234 Odorous House Ant
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A  common  response  to  seeing  an  ant  inside  your  house  is  to  stomp  on  it.  But  if  you  crush  a  member  of  the  ant  species  Tapinoma  sessile,  you  might  catch  a  whiff  of  a  strange  smell—a  smell  that  reminds  some  people  of  blue  cheese,  rancid  butter  or  rotten  coconut.  In  fact,  the  smell  is  so  noticeable  that  the  insect's  common  name  is  the  "odorous  house  ant."  And  many  people  call  it  the  coconut  ant.  In  an  effort  to  figure  out  why  people  have  these  reactions,    enlisted    at  an  event  called  the  North  Carolina  BugFest.  One-hundred-forty-three  volunteers  smelled  smushed  ants  and  were  asked  to  identify  the  scent  from  four  choices:  blue  cheese,  rancid  butter,  rotten  coconut  or  just  other.  Although  Web  sites  overwhelmingly  call  the  smell  rotten  coconut,  almost  40  percent  of  the  human  judges  picked  blue  cheese  and  about  25  percent  picked  rotten  coconut.  More  than  30  percent  went  with  the  choice  of  other.  The  scientists  then  analyzed  the  chemicals    for  the  ant  odor,  as  well  as  the  smelly  chemicals  in  blue  cheese,  fresh  coconut  and  coconut  buried  underground  for  three  days.  It  turns  out  that  the  chemistry  of  the  ants'  scent  is  indeed  similar  to  that  of  blue  cheese  and  rotten  coconut.  But  not  to  fresh  coconut.  And  the  researchers  note  that  the  Penicillium    that  turn  coconut  oil  rancid  are  also    in  the  production  of  blue  cheese.  The  study  is  in  the  journal  American  Entomologist.  The  researchers  also  noted  that  the  most  common  write-in  candidate  as  a  description  for  the  ants'  aroma  was  "cleaning  spray."  And  one  little  girl  told  them  that  the  ants  "smelled  exactly  like  her  doctor."

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