The incredible floating fire ant
26th April 2011
When in danger of drowning, a colony of the critters — thousands of them — will save themselves by joining forces and forming a raft. They pile together and lock legs and jaws.
So bound, an ant raft can survive for months.
Engineers studying animal oddities now report that together, the ants aren’t just stronger. They’re floatier. Airtight, even.
“Water does not penetrate the raft,” said Nathan Mlot, a mechanical engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology and lead author of the ant-raft report published in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academies. Even the bottom layer of ants stays dry, he said.
The parallels between fire ants and public employee unions grows increasingly uncanny.
April 26th, 2011 at 10:50
There is a relatively new ant that has been introduced to the Gulf Coast called the Raspberry Crazy Ant. No, I didn’t make that up. The name comes from the guy who discovered them and the crazy way they move (all directions at once). They are extremely invasive and will wipe out fire ant colonies. While they are not the biting hazard that fire ants are, they are incredibly hard to kill. (Omniverous, multiple queens, won’t go to bait, don’t follow each other’s trails so they don’t track through insecticide) They may be the ant world’s version of the Tea Party.