Everything about Trophallaxis totally explained
Trophallaxis is the transfer of food or other fluids among members of a
community through mouth-to-mouth (
stomodeal) or anus-to-mouth (
proctodeal) feeding. It is most highly developed in
social insects such as
ants,
termites and
bees. The word was introduced by the entomologist
William Morton Wheeler in 1918. The behaviour was used in the past to support theories on the origin of sociality in insects.
In
ants, individual colony members store food in their crops and regularly exchange it with other colony members and larvae to form a sort of "communal stomach" for the colony. In termites and cockroaches, proctodeal trophallaxis is crucial for replacing the gut
endosymbionts that's lost after every molt. This shouldn't be confused with
coprophagia. Some
vertebrates such as
birds also feed their young through trophallaxis.
Trophallaxis is also performed by members of the
dog family. In the wild, a hunting dog will regurgitate food gorged while far from its lair in order to feed its puppies. These puppies lick the face of the adult in order to trigger trophallaxis. Domestic dogs are tame because of arrested development of their wild tendencies and will treat certain humans, in particular their owner, as lifelong 'parents'. Therefore, when a dog licks your face, it may be that he's manifesting a vestigial feeding instinct.
Trophallaxis serves as a means of
communication, at least in
bees and
ants. In some species of ants, it may play a role in spreading the colony odour that identifies members.
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