Teamwork keeps fire ants high and dry

The physics that floats a bug's boat

By Daniel Strain

Web edition : Monday, April 25th, 2011

By linking very close together, ants on the bottom of this raft create a watertight seal much like a boat’s hull.

"When floods strike, ants ride out the storm in a self-assembled ant raft. In this study, ant groups of 1,000 to 7,000 bugs spread out in the water to form a raft of uniform thickness."  Fire ants are incredible survivors and have shown how working together can lead to survival of their population.  Physicist from the Georgia Institute of Technology are studying these ants on how that work together to form these incredible structures.  The hope is that they can use their findings to build robots with smaller processors and that can work together to build structures, like bridges. 

I was first interested in this article because of the word 'Teamwork"  I am amazed with how insects and other animals can work together in times of need to do something.  Over and over again I find that ants seem to have many secrets in how to work together.

I can make many connections to life.  First we have many challenges that face the human race that are potentially life threatening to our population on Earth.  It is amazing how one of the smallest creatures can outperform us in regards to teamwork. Also, animals and plants have always been the catalyst for many of our engineering designs and once again we are using organic life to help show us ways we build things to help up survive and participate in the world.

If you would like to read the original article click on the following Link.
Teamwork Article

View the video by clicking on this link.
Fire Ant Video