Desert ants rely on which cues alongside sunlight to find their nest?

Desert ants rely on which cues alongside sunlight to find their nest?

• A. Magnetic fields
• B. Star charts
• C. Sunlight, polarized light, and step counting
• D. Ocean swells

Answer: (C)

Desert ants navigate by combining multiple directional cues with an internal distance tracker. They use the sun as a compass to set direction, and they also pick up polarized light patterns in the sky, which provide directional information even when the sun isn’t clearly visible. To know how far they’ve traveled, they rely on step counting—an internal odometer that helps them estimate the distance back to their nest. Put together, sunlight, polarized light cues, and their stride-based distance measurement let them return very accurately to the nest after foraging. Other cues like magnetic fields, star patterns, or ocean-related cues aren’t used in this navigation process.

Desert ants navigate by combining multiple directional cues with an internal distance tracker. They use the sun as a compass to set direction, and they also pick up polarized light patterns in the sky, which provide directional information even when the sun isn’t clearly visible. To know how far they’ve traveled, they rely on step counting—an internal odometer that helps them estimate the distance back to their nest. Put together, sunlight, polarized light cues, and their stride-based distance measurement let them return very accurately to the nest after foraging. Other cues like magnetic fields, star patterns, or ocean-related cues aren’t used in this navigation process.