Wanna know something cool? You can get ants to do pretty much anything by dabbing a bit of chemicals somewhere. (there is a video where an ant goes ""Whoops! I'm dead" and puts itself in the dead ant pile on youtube. It is not harmed by this and goes about it's life afterwards). consider if sprout just couldn't smell the colony in attack mode. I don't see holes in the buggy ball.
Yes! I remember watching a video like that! I can’t remember if it was this one or another but it explains it the same way.
Anyway ants use pheromones to create trails when they forage in order to bring materials back to their hive, but ants also produce pheromones when attacking predators to attract more soldiers or when they die in order to act as a warning for other ants. If you isolate the “death” pheromone and spray an ant with it, even the sprayed ant will think it’s dead and act accordingly.
If Bugsnax act the same way by producing pheromones, then it would absolutely make sense that Sprout remained docile! If it was Sprout that made it to the mainland, too, then he likely wouldn’t actively attempt to infect other grumpuses since he wouldn’t have access to “attack” chemicals!
