For all that bees, wasps and ants have tiny brains, many species have impressive navigational skills, which are largely vision-based. Experiments with one species of ant now furnish support for the idea that these ants navigate to their goal, say a food source, by using a sequence of ‘snapshots’ of the environment acquired when they were on their way home after first visiting that goal. On their way back, the ants frequently turn round and make short ‘inspection runs’ towards the goal, and it is proposed that the purpose is to take the navigational snapshots that enable them to find their way back again.
