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How do you make ants run in circles? No, this isn’t one of those pun-based riddles but the latest science mystery to hit the Internet via viral video. A group of bustling ants in the vicinity of an iPhone will suddenly move in circles around the device when it starts to ring.

The video, that evokes the imagery of societies being driven in slave-like manners by technology, has triggered much hypothesizing among entomologists online. One theory is that the electromagnetic radiation of the phone affects the ants’ orientation. Nigel Andrew, professor of entomology at the university of New England told Yahoo News that ants have magnetic receptors to orient themselves and use the Earth’s magnetic cues to know where they are going. The electromagnetic waves emitted by the ringing phone might interfere with their system of orientation resulting in the bizarre group behaviour.

Gene Robinson of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign told Tech Insider that the vibrations from the phone affect the trail-following behavior of the ants, who have very elaborate rules to avoid congestion. Others say that ants run in circles anyway. Simon Robson, social insect researcher at James Cook University in Australia said that many ants form circles even in the absence of phones.

Army ants that are blind sometimes form these circles when they lose they pheromone tracking systems that keep them in touch with the foragers in the group. They then form what are called “death spirals” where they keep following each other in circled till they die of hunger and exhaustion.

The last of all the theories is, of course, that the video is fake. Some insect experts told Tech Insider that the video looked sketchy and the lack of data about the ant swarm was suspect.