This is Scientific American 60 Second Science.

I'm Cynthia Graber.

Got a minute?

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

Tapanoma Cessily, you might catch a whiff of a strange

smell, a smell that reminds some people of blue cheese,

bluh, rancid butter, or rotten coconut.

No, please, no more.

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,

researchers enlisted visitors at an event called the North Carolina Bug Fest.

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 websites overwhelmingly call the smell Rotten Coconut,

almost 40% of the human judges picked blue cheese,

and about 25% picked rotten coconut.

More than 30% went with the choice of other.

The scientists then analyze the chemicals responsible for the ant odor,

as well as the smelly chemicals in blue cheese fresh

...