Are desert ants capable of trigonometry for navigation?

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In summary: Oh wow, here is the best path back home. To heck with my own trail.' Because only then did he "sniff" out the strong pheromone trail.The desert ants use pheromones to communicate. Ants that find food first release a strong scent that encourages other ants to follow the scent to the food. This trail becomes stronger as the ants follow it back to the colony.
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Was just reading in Clifford A. Pickover's "The Math Book" that ants of the Sahara desert can, after wandering in a non-linear path to find food, from there go directly back home without a line of sight between the two locations.

I don't see how one can arrive at the correct direction and distance to travel without not only keeping track of footsteps and angles turned along the way, but knowing the sines and cosines of such angles, the ability to multiply numbers together, and then in effect having a table of the inverse tangent function and square roots to calculate the return trip.

I should mention that the essay only seems interested in the fact that the ants can keep track of the distance they travel by counting their steps, since artificially lengthening and shortening their legs messes up the voyage back accordingly.
 
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In the same way that a child learns to catch a ball without solving kinematic equations, the ants can no doubt work out the way home without explicitly doing the maths you suggest.

How they do it is a good question. But, just because it could be done with trigonometry, doesn't imply that's how they do it.
 
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Read something similar about dogs and when they see a kid on a bike riding perpendicular to their line of sight, they beeline to a point on the street that they know the bike will be by the time they get there!
 
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Ants retrace their step to the colony by following their own pheromone trail. When they double back (primarily after finding food) it reinforces the trail and encourages other ants to use it. Routes with food at the end emergently become stronger trails and end up being taken by a majority of foresters. Eventually the line will straighten out because the random actions of ants cutting corners will lead to a shorter path, with quicker turn around and thus a stronger trail.

On my phone so struggling to find a good video to demonstrate but this timelapse shows some of the process:

 
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PeroK said:
How they do it is a good question.

I guess we won't know until we learn to speak ant! Amazing what life on Earth can do.
 
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@snoopies622 - we do know - see @Ryan_m_b answer above. What is going on here:
1. if an ant is first to find some food, it does in fact retrace it's originally circuitous path back home. Period. This is how ants navigate. E O Wilson has written dozens of papers on this topic. See the video link above.
2. the original observer has no way to know if this ant was first to find or if hundreds of other previous ants had made the trip and our study ant came on the food at a unique angle, and said 'Oh wow, here is the best path back home. To heck with my own trail.' Because only then did he "sniff" out the strong pheromone trail.
Why? Humans cannot perceive ant pheromone trails with our inborn set of senses.

PS: ants cannot talk or do math, but the thread title anthropomorphizes, so I can too. It's more fun that way.
 
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jim mcnamara said:
1. if an ant is first to find some food, it does in fact retrace it's originally circuitous path back home. Period.

That's just not the case with desert ants. Desert ants are outstanding navigators. After a tortuous foraging trip, desert ants return on straight homewards paths. The terminology regarding this capability is “path integration” which results in a homebound global vector. See, for example, chapter 1.2 in [PDF]The desert ant's celestial compass system - Humboldt-Universität zu ...
 
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1. Can ants actually do trigonometry?

While ants are incredibly intelligent creatures, they do not possess the ability to do trigonometry in the same way that humans do. However, they do use complex navigation and communication techniques to find their way back to their colony, which may appear similar to trigonometric calculations.

2. How do ants navigate without using trigonometry?

Ants use a combination of various methods, including visual cues, scent trails, and counting steps, to navigate their surroundings. They also communicate with each other through pheromones, allowing them to follow the same path as other ants in their colony.

3. Is there any evidence that ants use trigonometry?

While there have been studies that suggest ants may use simple forms of geometry to navigate, there is no evidence to support the idea that they use trigonometry. Their navigation methods are more closely related to their strong sense of smell and ability to recognize patterns.

4. Can ants measure angles and distances like humans?

No, ants do not have the physical ability to measure angles and distances like humans do. However, their navigation techniques allow them to estimate distances and follow specific paths to reach their destination.

5. Are there any animals that can do trigonometry?

There is no scientific evidence to suggest that any animal, including humans, can do trigonometry. While some animals may possess advanced cognitive abilities, they do not have the same understanding of mathematics and geometry that humans do.

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