Ant behavior: will stray ants find and be accepted into new colonies?

I don’t think ants will be accepted by different colonies. I think once they are on their own they will live and die that way; probably fairly quickly without the resources provided by the nest.

As far as I am aware, ants are all chemically coded to their respective colony and queen. Ants can smell if another ant does not belong.

Hmm. I think if it’s of the same species, it might do ok. Otherwise no. It would be an interesting experiment to try mixing same-species ants from different colonies in the same transparent ant farm to see what they do.

Some ants can live quite a while (well, at least a week) even without many resources but water, where there are also no threats.

From this experiment I would venture a guess that ants are quite scent-sensitive.

If they detect “I’m dead” on a living ant from their own colony, I would assume they can also distinguish “my colony” from “interloper”.

I think the only way a foreign ant might be accepted by another colony would be as a food source.

@Yetanotheruser True dat! I think ants are a lot less tolerant of illegal immigrants than the US not that I am suggesting we should use them as a food source

they’d probably be gamey anyway