Insects use pheromones to ‘talk’ to each other. They are similar to the hormones humans produce but are released externally into the environment. Not just insects, but almost every other animal, including squid, fish, salamanders, mice, and even humans, release pheromones. And even some plants!
Pheromones were discovered in 1959 by the Nobel Prize-winning German biochemist, Adolf Butenandt, and his team. They were studying female silkworm moths and found they were releasing an unusual chemical, which they named bombykol, which was attracting males of their species. This discovery was astonishing, because the chemical was released in minuscule amounts, and they needed 500,000 females to acquire enough bombykol to study it. They synthesised it artificially and found that it attracted male silkworm moths just as effectively as the
