Ask Tappity: Science Questions for Kids > How Do Ants Know Where to Find Food?
How Do Ants Know Where to Find Food?
Maybe you’ve seen a line of ants along the ground, carrying food back to their nest. But how did they find that food in the first place? Watch this video to find out, or read our explanation below!
Ants Sniff Out Food With Antennae
Ants don’t just search randomly for food - they have excellent senses of smell they use to guide them. But unlike us humans, ants don’t smell with their noses - they smell with their antennae. If you look at an ant moving up close, it will wave its antennae around, run a few steps, and wave its antennae around again. This antennae waving is the equivalent of human sniffing. Ants have 4-5x as many odor receptors as other insects, indicating that they probably have relatively powerful senses of smell.
Two Antennae Help With Direction
Your two ears help you identify where a sound is coming from - your brain does this by comparing the sound coming into each of your ears. Having two antennas helps ants in the same way - they can use them to figure out where exactly a smell is coming from.
Some Ants Navigate Using the Sun
Once they find the food, how do they get back to their nest? Some ants actually use the sun to navigate - once they find food, they head back to their nest in a straight line, despite having moved in a squiggly path to find the food. Scientists have determined that some ants track where the Sun is in the sky, and use that information to navigate just as well as if they had a GPS.
Ant Facts for Kids
Got ant questions? We’ve got ant answers!
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Ants are a lot stronger than humans for their body size - in fact, all animals of this size are. It's not because they go to the gym - it's because of a mathematical principle called the square-cube law, which states that the volume of an object increases a lot faster than its area. Muscular strength correlates to cross-sectional area, so as muscles become larger in volume, they become weaker relative to their size.
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Ants communicate with one another by releasing chemicals for one another to smell. These chemical signals are called pheromones.
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Ants don’t have ears. They can sense vibrations in the ground, similar to how we hear vibrations in the air, to sense what is around them.
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Yes - ants make chirping sounds by rubbing hard parts of their abdomens together.
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Compared to other insects, ants don’t see very well. Their vision is fairly blurry.
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Studies have shown that ants take around 250 naps per day! These naps are pretty short though - only about 1 minute each.
More Answers to Insect Questions from Kids
How does a caterpillar turn into a butterfly? Why do moths like light so much? The Tappity Science Library has interactive lessons with answers to those questions and more!
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