Skip to main content

Curiosities: Ants follow scout’s pheromone trail to a picnic

Q: What enables ants to find the nearest picnic?

A: From one ant to dozens, it doesn’t seem to take the critters long to overrun your ham sandwich and ruin your picture-perfect picnic.

It starts with an individual ant, which has left the colony on a scouting mission, says Bob Jeanne, a UW-Madison professor of entomology.