Ant circles (ant turn, death spiral, death carousel) is a natural phenomenon in which one or a small group of ants starts running in a vicious circle for no apparent reason, gradually involving more and more other ants in their endless cycle. The ants continue their run until they fall dead, and the ant circle continues its rotation until the ants are completely exhausted, leaving behind hordes of dead.
In 1910, the largest American myrmecologist William Morton Wheeler described a case of a spontaneously emerging ant circle that he observed in laboratory conditions, which lasted for 46 hours. In 1921, the American traveler William Beebe in his book "The Edge of the Jungle" described a circle of ants he saw in Guyana with a diameter of about 365 meters, in which each of the ants completed a full cycle in 2.5 hours. This ant swirl existed for 2 days, sprinkling the ground beneath it with dead bodies, until a small group of worker ants accidentally separated from the general movement and took away the surviving ones.
There are various explanations for the phenomenon of "ant circles" associated with the pheromone trail along which ants run, the influence of a magnetic field, etc.