On leaving the nest [1–9] or a newly discovered food site[10–12] for the first time, bees and wasps perform elaborateflight maneuvers to learn the location of their goal and the layof the land surrounding it. In all these orientation flights theinsects turn back and look [13] at the goal, which they canvisually locate by landmark cues directly defining the goal.Here  we  show  that  Namibian  desert  ants,Ocymyrmex,when learning new landmarks in the neighborhood of thegoal, acquire this landmark information when they cannotsee the goal. They do so by performing well-choreographedrotation movements   integrated in spiral-like "learningwalks." Within these rotations, short (about 150 ms) stop-ping phases occur, during which the ants orient themselves in the direction of the nest entrance. On the  barren sandsurface the nest entrance is invisible, so the ants can aimat it only by reading out the current state of their path inte-grator  [14–17].  Hence,  they  could  associate  "snapshot" views  [18–20]  taken of the nest surroundings during the stopping phases with path integration coordinates. In beesand ants such associations  have often been discussed, but evidence has not been obtained yet.