How do ants find the shortest path to food?
Ant Highway Mystery
How do ants find the shortest path to food?
You drop a cookie crumb on the sidewalk. Within minutes, a parade of ants is marching straight to it — not wandering randomly, but following the shortest route like they've got GPS. How do they do it without phones or maps?
The first ant that finds your crumb is basically lost. She's wandering everywhere, zigzagging across the concrete, checking under pebbles, looping back on herself. But as she walks, she's leaving behind an invisible trail — a chemical called a pheromone, like breadcrumbs made of smell.
