Sunday, May 8, 2011

Self-assembling rafts: how fire ants survive floods

Ever wonder how a colony of ants could survive a flood? Apparently the Brazilian fire ant, Solenopsis invicta, can self-assemble into hydrophobic rafts of thousands of individuals. These rafts can remain afloat for days at time without drowning the individual ants.

It turns out that individual ants are hydrophobic, or water repelling. However, the ants are slightly denser that water so they must rely on surface tension to remain above the water.  Surface tension only works for relatively small objects, so how can a raft of thousands of individual ants remain afloat?

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