When humans need to go back and forth from their homes to other places, they usually rely on street names, landmarks, or GPS instructions on their phones to get them where they need to go. It seems like an easy way to navigate and get around safely, but how do animals do so without technology on their side?
Many animals, especially birds, travel for hundreds, if not thousands, of miles when they migrate south for the winter and back north to their homes. How do they manage not to get lost in the process when there is no way for them to know where to go? Animal navigation, depending on the species, is actually quite fascinating and a complicated process.
1. The Talents of Ants
In order to keep the colony alive, red ants venture away from their nest to search for food. They can travel great distances to do so, and when they do find some, they will pick up any morsel in their tiny jaws and carry it all the way back home.
Nevertheless, being that small, how can they tell that they are going in the right direction? Any leaf may look like another one, so it is probably effortless for them to get lost. What is even worse is that with the food they have found, they are forced to walk backward, dragging the food behind them, so how do animals even know they are going the right way?