The odorous black house ant is pretty common in the US. The smell is pretty pronounced if you crush them - grad student I was doing field work under randomly shouted “come smell my finger!” and yeah - it’s very much like blue cheese.

I can smell ant death pheromones. It smells like cleaner and artificial sweetener. A very unique smell but very pungent.

An anteater in a human suit

I can smell a single bedbug. That smell is terrifying

Maybe it was a particularly stinky ant

Some comments are calling it a genetic quirk, but I submit to you all that it is the ones that lack the ability that have a deficiency.

If I touch an ant I can certainly smell it on my finger but I wouldn't be able to detect an ant in the room with me

Fuck I have the stupid shitty cilantro gene and there's some dudes with ant hunting genes?

Not fair :(

I have the same thing. Maybe not quite that powerful, but as a kid I used to root out ant hills to shove sticks in and be a general terror. I thought it was normal until I started dating a girl and we went on a picnic and pointed them out saying we shouldn't eat there. If I smash one it smells like someone opened a can of gas in the room.

Omg, this is peak nerd.

If this is a thing it's def a special subset of ant smellers that would go ant hunting (whatever quantity of ants).

There was a brief moment, while I was going through SERE training, in the Navy; it was before we were "captured" but long enough that I hadn't eaten in a while. We were in the low mountains of SoCal, dry and hot. Whenever we would stop movement for a moment and take a seat, I could smell when an ant was on me.

I didn't recognize what the smell was at first until I saw an ant, after smelling it. I hooked him on my finger and brought him close to my nose and it was clear, he was the source.

I couldn't describe it very well though, not a common smell to me. Never experienced it since.

Maybe it was the combination of no food or bathing, and heightened stress. My SiL also went through SERE, says she has no idea what I was talking about, and just makes fun of me about it. But she's also the type of person who would lie about it, just to fuck with me.

So who knows.

yeah a small % of folks can smell them.

Last time I was reading through comments from those who could, the common response was "sorta like raisins"

I have it. My mom used to crush ants she saw in the kitchen before she realized that the stink I was complaining about was the stench of compressed ant corpses. Don't get me started on these stinky fucks: