By Charles Q. Choi, Live
Science Contributor | July 12, 2017 06:08am ET
Fire ants can build miniature
look-alikes of the Eiffel Tower from their own bodies, and the insects
perpetually rebuild the structures to save them from collapsing, a new study
finds.
The insects crawl up and down
these structures in a phenomenon that resembles a slow-motion water fountain in
reverse, the researchers said.
The new study's finding could
help lead to swarms of
robots that can use their own bodies to form complex 3D structures,
the scientists added.
Building rafts
Fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) evolved in the
Pantanal wetlands of Brazil. In 2011, Craig Tovey, a biologist at the Georgia Institute
of Technology in Atlanta, and his colleagues discovered the way in which
colonies of these insects
can shape themselves into raftsthat can stay afloat for months.
Fire ants can use sticky pads at
the ends of their feet to link to each other and form a pancake-shaped raft.
The 2011 study found that each ant's exoskeleton can trap air bubbles and
become slightly water-repellent. Weaving a colony together leads to a more
powerful waterproofing effect that keeps the
raft dry while afloat in the water.
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