Viral Video: Ants Mysteriously Circling iPhone Take Internet by Storm

This video of black ants mysteriously circling a ringing iPhone has the Internet completely hooked. The video has been watched over 2 million times on YouTube since it was posted on August 30, and it's easy to see why. This footage will leave you scratching your head.

While several are dismissing this as a hoax, it's interesting to see how these ants behave around the phone as it rings. In the 21-second footage, the ants are seen going about their business until the phone starts to ring. As it vibrates, the ants scurry into a pattern, forming concentric circles around the phone. 

The descriptor of the video, uploaded by Viral Video Lab, says it was shot on a front porch with an Apple iPhone 4.

After the video went viral, several theories explaining the ants' behaviour have surfaced. 

According to Daily Mail, the vibrating phone might have triggered a pheromone response in which the ants use chemical signals to leave a trail for fellow ants to a food source or as emergency beacons when defending a colony. Leaving the trail in a circular pattern, however, might mean that the ants will loop endlessly until dying of exhaustion. 

There are also theories that electromagnetic radiation from the phone might affect the ants' behaviour.

"The shape of the phone may have something to do with it and the vibration might get them a bit more excited," Simon Robson, a social insect expert at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia told Boing Boing.