Recording wood ants with conventional microphones – an ongoing field experiment

[inspire]

 

I have recently started experimenting with recording wood ants (Formica sp.) and thought this might be of interest to other field recordists here.

There is surprisingly little information about recording ants with conventional microphones. Most of the discussions I have found suggest using contact microphones, especially when recording directly on or inside an ant nest. I wanted to try something different: recording the ants' movement acoustically, without placing anything on the nest and without disturbing the ants.

I have a wood ant colony in my garden, with a very active trail running between the nest and a nearby maple tree. The trail is approximately 17–18 metres long. There are usually quite a lot of ants moving in both directions, although they are surprisingly difficult to see in photographs because their colour blends so well with the forest floor.

My first successful experiment was made with a Schoeps MSTC 74 stereo microphone. I placed it very low above the ground, directly beside the ant trail, but not on the nest. I was genuinely surprised by the result. The ants produce an extremely quiet but continuous "scratching"/movement texture, and the conventional stereo microphone picked it up much better than I expected.

I then tried two shotgun microphones:

• Schoeps MiniCMIT GR relatively close to the trail
• DPA 2017 at a greater distance

The closer microphone produced the more interesting result. The DPA 2017, despite being an excellent microphone, was simply too far away for the very quiet ant sounds to rise sufficiently above the surrounding environmental noise.

I also tested Sound Devices NoiseAssist at -10 dB. Interestingly, this was not an improvement. The recording became cleaner, but some of the very subtle ant movement was also removed. This was a useful reminder that with extremely quiet natural sounds, what sounds like "noise" to a noise-reduction algorithm may actually be part of the sound I am trying to record. For this particular experiment I therefore prefer the recording without NoiseAssist.

My latest experiment was with a Shure VP88, using two Triton Audio FetHead Phantom inline preamps, one for each channel. I used:

48 kHz / 32-bit float
VP88 Stereo / M
low-frequency roll-off OFF
NoiseAssist OFF

I chose the VP88's M stereo setting as a reference because it is the manufacturer's general-purpose setting, between the narrower L and wider H stereo configurations. The VP88's internal M/S matrix provides normal left/right stereo output in this mode.

The microphone was positioned very close to the ant activity, again without placing it on the ants or the nest. There had been quite heavy rain shortly before the recording, so the ants were moving more slowly than on previous days, although there was still plenty of activity.

And here comes the frustrating part:

I forgot to arm the two MixPre channels.

So I ended up with two beautiful empty files. 🤦‍♂️

However, I was monitoring the recording on headphones throughout the experiment, so I did get to hear the result in real time. And this was actually the most interesting part: the VP88 sounded noticeably different from the MSTC 74 and the shotgun microphones.

I don't want to draw any conclusions yet, because unfortunately I have no recorded file to analyse. I will repeat the experiment on another day, using exactly the same VP88 configuration and approximately the same microphone position.

What I find interesting about this experiment is that the ants do not have to touch the microphone to be recorded. A conventional stereo microphone placed very close to a busy trail can capture surprisingly subtle sounds of their movement.

I am particularly interested in whether the different stereo characteristics of the VP88 will reveal something that I am not getting from the MSTC 74.

If anyone here has experimented with recording ants, wood ants, or other very small insects using conventional microphones rather than contact microphones, I would be very interested to hear about your approach and results.

Recorded in Estonia.

[inspire]

This recording was made on 26 August 2026 on a sunny, calm day. With a Schoeps MSTC 74 stereo microphone

https://freesound.org/people/inspire153/sounds/867905/

 

Video link

https://youtu.be/ANQR0p1VRsM

 

ISO track captured with the Schoeps MiniCMIT GR

 

https://freesound.org/people/inspire153/sounds/868204/

 

Video link

https://youtu.be/Hw8zdzfWrc0

[Jason Nicholas]

Please someone develop specialist a mic for recording ants and call it the ForMIC.

[The Documentary Sound Guy]

Lol, sounds like a transFORMational piece of technology to me!

[Spikesoundman]

On 9/11/2026 at 6:28 AM, inspire said:

 

I have recently started experimenting with recording wood ants (Formica sp.) and thought this might be of interest to other field recordists here.

There is surprisingly little information about recording ants with conventional microphones. Most of the discussions I have found suggest using contact microphones, especially when recording directly on or inside an ant nest. I wanted to try something different: recording the ants' movement acoustically, without placing anything on the nest and without disturbing the ants.

I have a wood ant colony in my garden, with a very active trail running between the nest and a nearby maple tree. The trail is approximately 17–18 metres long. There are usually quite a lot of ants moving in both directions, although they are surprisingly difficult to see in photographs because their colour blends so well with the forest floor.

My first successful experiment was made with a Schoeps MSTC 74 stereo microphone. I placed it very low above the ground, directly beside the ant trail, but not on the nest. I was genuinely surprised by the result. The ants produce an extremely quiet but continuous "scratching"/movement texture, and the conventional stereo microphone picked it up much better than I expected.

I then tried two shotgun microphones:

• Schoeps MiniCMIT GR relatively close to the trail
• DPA 2017 at a greater distance

The closer microphone produced the more interesting result. The DPA 2017, despite being an excellent microphone, was simply too far away for the very quiet ant sounds to rise sufficiently above the surrounding environmental noise.

I also tested Sound Devices NoiseAssist at -10 dB. Interestingly, this was not an improvement. The recording became cleaner, but some of the very subtle ant movement was also removed. This was a useful reminder that with extremely quiet natural sounds, what sounds like "noise" to a noise-reduction algorithm may actually be part of the sound I am trying to record. For this particular experiment I therefore prefer the recording without NoiseAssist.

My latest experiment was with a Shure VP88, using two Triton Audio FetHead Phantom inline preamps, one for each channel. I used:

48 kHz / 32-bit float
VP88 Stereo / M
low-frequency roll-off OFF
NoiseAssist OFF

I chose the VP88's M stereo setting as a reference because it is the manufacturer's general-purpose setting, between the narrower L and wider H stereo configurations. The VP88's internal M/S matrix provides normal left/right stereo output in this mode.

The microphone was positioned very close to the ant activity, again without placing it on the ants or the nest. There had been quite heavy rain shortly before the recording, so the ants were moving more slowly than on previous days, although there was still plenty of activity.

And here comes the frustrating part:

I forgot to arm the two MixPre channels.

So I ended up with two beautiful empty files. 🤦‍♂️

However, I was monitoring the recording on headphones throughout the experiment, so I did get to hear the result in real time. And this was actually the most interesting part: the VP88 sounded noticeably different from the MSTC 74 and the shotgun microphones.

I don't want to draw any conclusions yet, because unfortunately I have no recorded file to analyse. I will repeat the experiment on another day, using exactly the same VP88 configuration and approximately the same microphone position.

What I find interesting about this experiment is that the ants do not have to touch the microphone to be recorded. A conventional stereo microphone placed very close to a busy trail can capture surprisingly subtle sounds of their movement.

I am particularly interested in whether the different stereo characteristics of the VP88 will reveal something that I am not getting from the MSTC 74.

If anyone here has experimented with recording ants, wood ants, or other very small insects using conventional microphones rather than contact microphones, I would be very interested to hear about your approach and results.

Recorded in Estonia.

 

Interesting the attempt to record Ants .WE tried this in the past and found the Sennheiser MKH70 shotgun mic worked very well being fed to my Nagra 42L. Being mono it tracked individual Ants as they moved in and out of the nest. These little guys  exhibit both travel sounds and they make communication voice type sounds. It's fun to just find the proper place without wind noise. Stir up the nest ever so much and get ready for some recording fun. Thanks

[Izen Ears]

This is awesome.

[inspire]

Thanks everyone for the comments and for sharing your experiences — and I’m glad you found the experiment interesting!

One colleague whose ears I trust gave me some useful feedback after listening to the recordings. He described the result as being somewhat white-noise-like, with the passing insect adding a small extra nuance. He also felt that the stereo recording was more convincing.

That is actually quite interesting to me, because the ant sounds themselves are very subtle. The continuous “scrambling” is there, but it is easy to perceive it more as a texture than as clearly identifiable individual ants.

For comparison, here is a Freesound recording made with a contact microphone, where the ants were actually crawling over the microphone:

 

Freesound – “Ant nest” by ali.g
https://freesound.org/people/ali.g/sounds/855325

 

It gives a good idea of what a much more direct contact-microphone approach can sound like.

And thanks again for the encouragement — especially the ForMIC and transFORMational suggestions! 😄