Ants are one of nature’s success stories. Having flourished for nearly one hundred million years, it’s been estimated that there are close to twenty thousand different species of ants, even though only twelve and half thousand have actually been identified.
Highly social, ants are a species that thrives on hierarchy and order, and every member of an ant colony has a specific task to perform and a place in the colony's pecking order.
It’s this rigid biological discipline that is responsible for their widespread success, and their ability to appear anywhere and everywhere when you least expect, or want, them too.
Ants are the dominant insects in the world – E.O. Wilson
How Did Ants Get In My Car?
As we’ve already said, ants get everywhere, and when we say everywhere, we really mean everywhere.
But, as you’ve already found them in your car, we’re almost certainly preaching to the choir and you already know just how invasive ants can be.
First things first, don’t worry. They’re not trying to steal your ride, they haven’t borrowed your keys in the middle of the night and they’re not planning to alter all of the presets on your radio and spend an evening hanging out in your car listening to shock jocks.
Why would they do any of those things? They’re ants, and they’re driven by biology and instinct, both of which are, more than likely, the reason you’ve found them in your car.
Why Are They In My Car?
There’s a simple explanation for finding ants in your car, and it’s the same reason that you’ll find ants in all of the most unexpected places. They’re looking for food.
The ants you’ve stumbled across are more than likely to be worker ants who have been dispatched by their colony to fulfill their primary objective, to find food to feed the rest of the colony.
Once they’ve been given a mission, ants will attempt to fulfill it no matter what the personal cost, and the lure of spilled cookie crumbs, the odd potato chip or something high in sugar content like a misplaced piece of candy or its wrapper, has drawn them into your vehicle.
Now that they’ve found a new source of food, those ants are likely to keep coming back, as they know where to find it and how easy it is to source that food and take it back to the colony.
The problem isn’t that they’ve discovered food in your car, or that they know how to get into your car. No, the real problem is now that they know the food is there, more and more of them are going to be dispatched to your car to bring that food back.
So if you’ve found a couple of ants in your car and they’ve been successful in their quest, then the next time you get in your car, you’re more than likely going to find even more ants in it.
And because they’re so relentless, determined, and single-minded, those ants are just going to keep coming back.
This means that you’re going to have to take matters into your own hands and get rid of them yourself.
So How Do I Get Rid Of The Ants In My Car?
Again, don’t panic, and don’t worry, ants are relatively easy to get rid of and if you catch, and deal, with the problem early enough, they probably won’t come back.
Change Your Parking Space
It sounds crazy, we know, but ants follow specific behavioral patterns and biological guides, and just moving your car from its usual parking space might be enough to deal with the ant problem.
Ants will often follow the same path and the markers they’ve left in place to return to a source of food and if those makers don’t lead them to where they expect them to, they’ll set off in search of a new source of food, and forget all about your car.
And if you’re parked near woodland, trees, or grass, then there’s a pretty high possibility that you’ve parked next to, near, or on top of a colony, which means that you’re more likely to find ants in your car, as it’s parked within the confines of their territory.
Again, the solution to the issue could be as simple as just moving your car. If you break the trail and the ants can’t find your car, they can’t get into it.
Clean Your Car Or Have It Valeted
Ants are insidious, and as long as there’s a source of food in your car, they’ll keep coming back.
So, go through your car with a fine tooth comb and clear out all of the wrappers and trash that, through everyday usage, might have accumulated in the footwells and under the seats.
It’s also a pretty good idea to vacuum all the carpets and seats in your car, as even though it’s easy for us to miss crumbs and tiny particles of food, ants will find them wherever they are.
But if they aren’t there, because you’ve vacuumed, the ants will consider that supply of food to be exhausted and continue their search elsewhere.
Alternately, and this is our favorite, finding ants in your car is a great excuse to have it valeted, as you know that if you do, it’ll be cleaned thoroughly from top to bottom.
And even though it might sting your pocketbook a little, it’s an incredibly effective way of dealing with your automobiles ant issue.
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It’s An Ant Trap… And They’ve Been Caught
If your automotive ant problem is still driving you up the wall after you’ve taken the financial hit and had your car valeted, then the final, and sure-fire way of dealing with those ants once and for all, is by laying ant traps in your car.
It sounds unnecessarily cruel, we know, but sometimes you have to be objective and look at the best way of dealing with a situation.
And if you’ve tried everything else, sometimes the last thing that you’d ever think of doing is the only way to effectively deal with a problem, once and for all.
