Ants have about a million times less brain power than the average person. So how do ants always find their way back home when I can barely navigate a signposted city using a map?

Another possibility is that the ants simply count their steps. In a remarkable experiment published in Science in 2006, scientists painstakingly attached “stilts” made of pig hairs to some the ants’ legs, while other ants had their legs clipped, once they had reached their food target. If the ants counted their steps on the journey out, then the newly short-legged ants should stop short of the nest, while stilted ants should walk past it. Indeed, this is what occurred!

More secrets of ant (and bird and gerbil) navigation at SEED.