Can ants hear humans talk?

No, ants cannot hear humans talk in the way humans hear speech because they lack ears, eardrums, and auditory systems that detect airborne sound waves like human voices, but they can detect vibrations and chemical signals that allow them to sense disturbances. Ants primarily communicate through pheromones which are chemical trails and through tactile signals with their antennae, not through sound. They do have sensory hairs on their legs and bodies that detect substrate-borne vibrations in the ground, tables, or floors, so if you talk very loudly and cause vibrations on a surface where ants are foraging, they may sense those vibrations as a potential threat and scatter, but they do not hear the words, understand speech, or interpret human language. Some ant species can produce faint sounds by rubbing body parts together, called stridulation, which creates chirps that other ants detect through vibrations in the nest as alarm signals, but this is not hearing speech. Research shows ants respond to vibrations by freezing or fleeing to avoid predators. For pest control purposes, talking, shouting, or playing music does not affect ant behavior or deter them from following pheromone trails to food, so control requires sanitation by storing food sealed and cleaning crumbs, sealing entry points with caulk, and using gel baits containing fipronil or borax that workers carry back to kill the queen and colony, rather than sound. So ants cannot hear you talk, but they may feel strong vibrations nearby.