I read some time ago in a book titled 'Swarm Intelligence' that ants use pheromone to optimize their way to the food. Ants which go through the shortest path come back earlier, thus incrementing the amount of pheremone in that path, thus attracting more ants inducing them to follow that path.
I don't know the relationship between pheromone-path-finding with missjudging the distance because of a bodily alteration, though.