Fire Ant Raft

yall are crazy.

Part of why I think studying animals is awesome is because it encapsulates a broad interdisciplinary range of topics.  Now, engineers at Georgia Tech have delved into one of my favorite insect events  EVER: The Fire. Ant. Raft.  yes. 

Every now and then, the Amazon jungle has enough flooding to destroy the network of local fire ant tunnels.  So, in a typical mechanized insect fashion, all the ants collect their eggs and join together to float down the Amazon for days or even weeks--unharmed.  The rafts can be around 3 feet in diameter and are so air-tight that even the ants on the bottom of the raft never get submerged in water.  They will finally reach land, unload, and start a new colony wherever that may be. 

It's a quirk of the Amazon fire ants that has gotten fairly popular but, until now, has not been sufficiently studied.  

Maybe it's because I'm from Georgia, or maybe it's because I think fire ants are terrifying, but I was absolutely thrilled when I heard that this topic was being taking up for study.  So far, the engineers have found that...jeez, I'm so thrilled I don't even feel like putting this in my own words: 

"By freezing the ants, the Georgia Tech team observed that fire ants construct rafts when placed in water by gripping each other with mandibles, claw and adhesive pads at a force 400 times their body weight.

The result is a viscous and elastic material that is almost like a fluid composed of ant “molecules,” researchers said. The ants spread out from a sphere into a pancake-shaped raft that resisted perturbations and submergence techniques."-How Fire Ants Build Waterproof Rafts, Georgia Tech 

That's just a littClick above to read the whole thing...you really should!

So, in conclusion, ant colonies behave like super-organisms, this is awesome, and I can't wait to see all the crazy studies and technology that comes from it.  

WELL DONE GEORGIA TECH!