If ants gets inside a car and then gets out 80 miles away, do they try to find it's colony or just wander until they become part of another colony?
by 
Starmaster
ANSWERS: 10
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Ants are pretty territorial and usually don't get along with ants of other colonies, so you're passenger ants will most likely just wander around, looking for their colony and being significantly confused.
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I doubt they would join another colony. To establish a new colony, they would need a queen, and they are sterile females. I think they would just die.
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They'll just jump in their car and drive back again
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That happened when I moved, I had a bunch of ants jump into a box that had an exploded soda in it and they came with me from California to Oregon. They did their thing for a couple days, looking for food and sugar, but apparently just wandered around looking for something familiar until they all decided to die in a weird cult-like mass suicide behind the toilet, very strange.
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There is a theory that a colony of ants is actually a single organism, with a single collective mind. A single ant don't have a mind of its own, and should be updated regularly with the collective mind. If a single ant was not updated by the collective mind, it wouldn't know what to do next and stops functioning.
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Very interesting question. I guess we need to fit them with radio collars and track them.
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They would die certainly, unless there is a queen with them, which is very unlikely.
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Ants find their nests by leaving a scent called "formic acid". If they are removed from their nest and can't find the smell they will die within a couple of days. They cannot joint another next as they would be seen as intruders and killed.
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Without the queen they would just wonder around and die eventually.
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Once an ant is away from his colony and the scent trail that takes it back home, it's going to be dead soon.
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