Fire Ants Are Yet Another Hazard in Houston’s Flooded Streets - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/fire-ants-harvey-hurricane-storm.html
Soon after the waters rose, the insects’ enterprise and instinct for communal self-preservation kicked in. They rose up from their underground tunnel systems and literally stuck together to survive, linking their claws and clinging to one another in massive rafts and balls that floated and spun in the current.
Scientists have studied the ants for their unusual ability to band together. In July, Vox made a video of the ants, showing how they stuck so well that they could be ladled en masse for easy transference from surface to surface. When their cluster is poked with a finger, it bounces back.
If subjected to longer periods of disturbance, the ant cluster acts like a fluid. When a coin is dropped into an aggregation of the insects, the group reforms slowly around the object. Scientists at Georgia Tech have been studying the physics and behavior of fire ant clusters, which have a consistency they say can be wobbly like Jell-O or flow like ketchup.
They do this by connecting with their legs — 100 ants means 600 legs — creating a springy network that repels liquid because of a coating on their bodies. “They weave into a waterproof fabric,” said David Hu, who is studying fire ants at Georgia Tech.