Ants wont die from being dropped from any height, their weight to surface area is so low that the ant will never hit a velocity that is terminal, so my question is why they won’t just jump from heights to reach certain points faster? Are they scared of heights?
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Ants use pheromone scent trails to find the way to and from their nest. If they were to jump they would be completely cut off from that web of scents that they can use to make their way back to their nest. They would simply be lost and disconnected from their colony.
It’s enough to injure them actually and those injuries can add up. If you slow mow an ant falling they compress like a normal creature and don’t always land perfectly which can lead to injuries.
Terminal velocity is not the velocity that will kill a living thing. Rather as wikipedia defines it as follows:
Terminal velocity is the maximum velocity attainable by an object as it falls through a fluid. It occurs when the sum of the drag force and the buoyancy is equal to the downward force of gravity acting on the object. Since the net force on the object is zero, the object has zero acceleration.
Not trying to be a know-it-all but this is a pet peeve of mine.
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Plus they weigh so little, a tiny gust could whisk them away hours from home. Why risk such a thing
https://antgame.io/challenge/daily
This little game explains the whole “scent trails” well. Place some pixels and press play and look how the ants behave.
Think of them dropping a large height like if someone moved you a state over and said “get back home” then took anything you had to use as a tool away
Ants leave pheromones behind which work like a bread crump trail to go back or for others to follow
I remember this documentary once where the ants just grab dandelion puffs and float where they want to go, one ant spilt all the food and had to leave to find protection from the evil grasshoppers, great documentary.
because they use scent and pheromones to leave a trail for others to follow. no trail when the ant is fllying through the air, and [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEKwQxO4EZU) is what happens when a bunch of ants lose their scent trail.
Ants have a visual range of about 1-2 feet. So if they’re 5 feet off the ground and just drop, they have no way of knowing what they’ll land on. It could be a stream that carries them away.
From an evolutionary perspective, it’s probably safest to go along a path you can trust, because it’s got a pheromone trail, than to just launch yourself into the unknown on a regular basis. Sure, walking takes longer, but it’s not like an ant is in a hurry to go anywhere, so who cares?
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