Ant question - just curious

If you dump the contents of a container some distance away from where it was sited and there is a random ant in it ( maybe an explorer), will the ant find its way back to the nest or die a lonely hermit?

 

Depends if it meets another ant from another colony on the other ant’s home ground…

 

They can navigate a fair way. If you took one from the back of a terraced house and put it out the front, with no route other than up the walls and over the roof to get home, it might struggle. Generally a solo ant will get back to base fairly quickly to avoid being attacked by another group. It would be unlikely to just join a nearby colony, unless it could get in without being detected as a stranger.

Read a book about them recently. A surprising degree of warfare goes on between groups apparently.

 

Thank you @ViewAhead .
We had a red ant colony at one end of the path and a black colony at the other. They were getting closer and closer. Antmageddon? I never found out. They'd all moved on by the next year.

 

There are lots of different types of ants and some are more aggressive than others, actually coordinating attacks rather than just responding to threats. Others are more peaceful and can rub along with neighbours, only coming to blows over the occasional flashpoint re food sources, pathways or territories.

I'll have a rake through my library history for the title of my recent read.

 

Empire of Ants by Susanne Foitzik and Olaf Fritsche (2021)