What object in the painting is covered with ants?

The object covered with ants in the painting is a pocket watch.

At the lower left of The Persistence of Memory, an orange-gold pocket watch lies closed and rigid while ants swarm across its case. Unlike the other watches, which droop and appear soft, this one retains a hard, recognizable shape. The contrast makes it one of the painting’s most memorable details and reinforces Dalí’s opposition between solid objects and dreamlike distortion.

Ants recur throughout Dalí’s art as images associated with decay, decomposition, and the unsettling transformation of familiar things. Their presence on the watch makes mechanical time seem vulnerable to organic corruption. The watch is therefore not simply another melting clock: it introduces a darker image of time being consumed or rendered useless.

Viewers sometimes answer “melting watch,” but that describes the object’s general category rather than the specific item covered by ants. The ant-covered watch does not melt. The painting contains several pocket watches, including soft watches draped over a branch, a ledge, and the biomorphic figure in the center. Dalí completed the oil painting in 1931, and it is now in MoMA’s collection.