Fire Ant Secret: How They Create Life-Saving Rafts in Floods A
fire ant raft is so elastic and buoyant that it resists probing
by a twig. CREDIT: Nathan Mlot and Tim Nowack It's the ultimate
vehicle for an emergency flood escape. It can assemble itself in
about 100 seconds, and keep thousands to millions of passengers
safe and afloat for days, even weeks. Floating clusters of fire
ants are a feat of natural engineering, and some researchers
wanted to know just how these ants create such safe, long-
lasting rafts out of themselves. The result means they can
survive floods in their native South American habitats as well
as migrate long distances. [Image of fire-ant raft] A team led
by Nathan Mlot, a doctoral student studying bio-inspired
engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, collected fire
ants by roadsides in Atlanta and then filmed and froze the ants
when they formed these floating clusters. [Fire Ants Go Global]
Once deposited into water in the lab, a spherical cluster of
ants spread outward, like a