AbstractAs an important branch of geophysical inversion, non‐linear inversion method has played a unique role in geophysical inversion. In recent years, more researchers are laying emphasis on non‐linear joint inversion, but no substantial progresses have been made at present. This paper tries to realize a two‐dimensional non‐linear inversion based on the high density resistivity method by using a joint calculation of both Back Propagation neural network (BP neural network) method and ant colony algorithm which is called Ant colony optimized Back Propagation (ABP) method. After a comparison of results concluded from two models, calculation with BP and ABP methods could achieve better results than with conventional method. Furthermore, the ABP method is superior to the BP neural network method for it could reduce number of iterations, save computation time and obtain a higher calculation accuracy.