Do ants feel acceleration?
According to Clinical Neurophysiology of the Vestibular System
 By Robert William Baloh, Vicente Honrubia, page 8, the vestibular system (animals' "accelerometer") is as old as 600 million years and is present in invertebrates.

I assume (without a precise source) that this is especially important for flying insects (after all, accelerometers were engineered for flying machines in the first place!) and that the ant didn't respond because the acceleration to which you submitted it was not deemed harmful.