10 Surprising Ways Animals Use Scent to Send Messages

8. Navigation and Orientation: Scent Trails

For some animals, scent works like an invisible map, guiding them through their environment with remarkable accuracy. Ants, for instance, create pheromone highways, leaving chemical trails that their colony members can follow straight to a food source. If the route changes, they adjust the scent markers, ensuring their efficiency never wavers. Salmon take a different approach, using their keen sense of smell to find their way home. After years in the open ocean, they can detect the unique chemical signature of their birth stream, guiding them back to spawn. Whether leading a colony to food or a fish back to its origins, scent-based navigation proves just how powerful olfactory cues can be in shaping the movements and survival of animals.