Being small and being strong
are not mutually exclusive.
Just look at these ants.
They don't seem to care that they're only a fraction
of the size of their meals.
Ants are everywhere.
They're so common
that we often don't think twice about them
unless they're pillaging our picnic basket, of course.
Though ants seem ordinary, they're extraordinary.
A field ant's neck joint
can withstand up to 5,000 times its weight.
That's kind of like an adult human holding a Boeing 747.
There are about 12,000 known species of ants.
While most of them are in the tropics,
they live all over the world.
There are so many ants
that their total weight is about the same as
all the humans on Earth.
That statistic might make your skin crawl,
but ants are an integral part of our planet's health.
They pollinate,
disperse seeds
and help circulate nutrients through the soil.
Without them, many ecosystems would collapse.
But what makes ants crazy creatures
is their strength,
especially in their powerful necks.
A research team at Ohio State University
glued some ants to a CD-size centrifuge at their necks.
I'm not sure I like what's going.
As the centrifuge spun, it applied force to their necks.
It wasn't until the centrifuge reached forces
of 3,400 to 5,000 times their body weight
that the ants' bodies separated from their heads
and flew off the centrifuge.
This doesn't prove that
all ants can carry 5,000 times their weight,
but it does show how strong their necks are
under extreme force.
Other factors help them to do such heavy lifting.
Ants’ muscles have a large cross-sectional area.
This makes them incredibly thick for their body sizes
and distributes their weight better.
If you compare their strength to their body weights,
ants can produce more force than larger creatures.
It gives them the ability to carry things as heavy
as baby birds
or lizards.
Ants even inspired a new branch of science
called microbiotics
that blends biology with engineering.
And army ants are architects too.
Despite having minuscule brains and not much
cognitive ability,
they can build bridges.
When a traveling colony reaches a gap,
the first ant slows down.
It gets trampled by the ants behind it
and freezes in place,
creating the first step across the gap.
Then the next ant reaching the gap slows down,
gets trampled
and freezes.
This process continues until the ants bridge the gap,
allowing the rest of the colony to walk safely across.
Now that there's teamwork.
Oddly enough,
army ants don't always build bridges that would
minimize the distance the colony has to travel.
Instead,
they may choose to go around the gap.
Now there's an idea.
When they're not traveling,
ants typically live in social colonies
of hundreds to thousands of individuals.
They prefer to live in hills or underground and carve
complex tunnels and chambers.
Because they rely so heavily on their colony,
communication is key.
They use chemical signals, or pheromones,
to tell each other things like
"follow me to food" or "attack the intruder."
They tend to walk in a single file line,
so they follow a trail of pheromones
each ant releases
as they walk.
The pheromones also help them recognize each other
and distinguish their social classes.
The queen's pheromone is unique to her.
While field ants are relatively harmless to humans,
bullet ants
are another story.
Find out why this particular ant has a
reputation for having the most
painful insect sting in the world
and how to survive it.
Powerlifting
and building bridges
are what ants do.
And that's what makes them