Ant Dance

Nature Games and Activities for Church Camps

Ants and other social insects cannot talk to each other, so they communicate using physical motions. Niko Tinbergen, one of the founders of the study of animal behavior, discovered that bees "dance" to communicate the location and distance of food sources to other members of the colony. In this game, campers will learn to listen with their eyes and follow directions given without a mouth, but rather by the feet and hands.

Introduce this game with a brief description of how social insects communicate with each other and then lead the campers in an introductory dance. Next, explain that you will make hand motions to describe the object that you want the campers to find, step in place a number of times to indicate distance, and then point towards the object. Any nearby object can do, such as rocks, a large branch, or a "lost" counselor. Start with simple ideas and gradually become more complex as the game goes on.

For older campers, you can make the game more complex by actually using the bee form of communication. The bees appear to use figure-eights to indicate the direction of resources, with the first diagonal indicating direction and its length relative distance. Have one camper hide a flower and then return to the group and direct them to find it.