Why You Shouldn’t Squish Ants, According to Pest Control Experts

It’s the sight every homeowner dreads: a trail of ants crawling around on the floors. While frustrated, you may feel the urge to squish, stomp, or swat those tiny uninvited guests, but you should resist the impulse. It’ll do more harm than good—not just to the insect, but to your home.

So, what’s a better way to deal with an ant infestation? We talked to two entomologists for insights into why the squish method should be avoided and more effective ways to tackle an ant infestation.

Why Squishing Ants Won’t Work

When an ant is killed by force, like squishing, the insect’s body will send a message to the rest of its colony—and maybe even leave a mess or odor. For example, wood ants release formic acid, which smells like vinegar and can cause skin irritation in humans.

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The Argentine ant and the carpenter ant are the most common types of ants found in homes. When squashed, those types of ants release pheromones to indicate danger and that the community should mobilize, fight, and defend.

“They’re essentially sending a distress signal to alert the nearby colony that there’s a perceived threat,” says Louisa Messenger, a medical entomologist and professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“They’re coming in to investigate, defend and mount more of a coordinated response. Counterintuitively, you actually end up with more ants than you wanted in the first place.”

Messenger notes that you can wipe away the formic acid or pheromones with vinegar or soapy water, but it’s a short-term solution for a few days.

“Essentially, that’s going to disrupt the ants’ ability to chemically locate where they and their sort of siblings have been traveling,” she says. “But if you have thousands of ants, that’s not going to solve the bigger picture.”

Both the Argentine and carpenter ants have super colonies with many queens, workers, and foragers who intermingle with each other, making them especially difficult to get rid of once an infestation takes hold.

“It’s subunits of nests that don’t have clearly defined boundaries,” says Brian L. Fisher, the chair of entomology at the California Academy of Sciences, who has researched ants for over 30 years.

“It’s impossible to say you’re going to keep all the ants out. Once you kill one little subunit, there’s another one that’s going to take its place, and those just keep going.”

3 Effective Ways to Get Rid of Ants in the Home

Using Poison Bait Products

Messenger suggests using an EPA-approved insecticide with poison bait, but with the understanding that some aren’t safe for small children and animals.

On top of that, many of the insecticides are slow-acting, so it will take about 72 hours for you to start seeing results.

The process depends on the way ants feed a colony. For Argentine ants, Fisher says the adult workers can’t eat solid food, so a worker ant has to carry the bait back to the colony, feed it to a larvae that can ingest it and regurgitate it for the workers, who then take it to the queen.

But all of that has to occur before the larvae dies from the poison. So it’ll likely take more than one ant to take the bait and kill the colony.

Fill in Cracks and Holes Around the House

Fisher and Messenger suggest blocking ants from coming into the house by setting barriers.

1. Take note of where the ants might be entering your home from.
2. Use clear silicon, chalk, or another material to seal any holes in the house where you suspect ants might be coming in from.
3. Stay vigilant and notice if the ants find another hole or crack to enter through.
4. Make sure to use the seal those holes as well. Repeat as necessary.

Try a Natural Remedy

Fisher and Messenger both suggested natural remedies such as Borax and sugar, Diatomaceous earth, and cloves that are safe for humans and pets.

“Using non-pesticides or nasty chemicals is feasible, but you have to be a little bit persistent,” Fisher says.

He notes cloves—either ground up or used whole—can repel ants and create a natural barrier against them.

Messenger suggests using Diatomaceous earth, which is a natural food-grade silica powder, and putting it around any cracks and crevices where the ants might be entering. The powder will break down the ant’s exoskeleton, causing them to die from dehydration.

How to Prevent an Ant Infestation

To prevent an ant infestation, Messenger advises to keep your kitchen clean and make sure to put away food in air-tight containers, take your trash out regularly, and fully clean up any small food crumbs or sugary drink spills around the house. Sugar attracts ants, among other insects.

“Sometimes, you can have a pristine home, but there’s some microscopic food in the environment that we wouldn’t be able to notice, but an ant certainly would,” Messenger says.

Ants look for water as well, so Fisher suggests keeping a five-foot barrier around your house dry and removing any irrigation.