Ants survive treacherous gushing waters from floods with support of their offspring.
According to a report printed in the Public Library of Science's One science journal, older ants use their babies as assistance when drifting through the conditions.
"It was an interesting contribution. No one had really looked at this idea of the brood as a flotation device," David Hu, a mechanical engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology told The Los Angeles Times. "It adds a level of sophistication to the rafts that was previously not understood," Hu told The Times. Hu was not part of the study.
The findings indicate that the ants unique structure inside of them allows them to float on water or in air, thus increasing their survival rate The Times reported.
The strategy puts the ants younger counterparts in danger of being consumed by fish, and drowning The Times reported.
Scientists from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland wanted to see what more there was to the ants routine and which member of the ant class was put in the susceptible conditions such as the queen the mother of the group, or babies.
Scientists gathered worker ants, brood ants, and queens from the Formice selysi ant colonies on the bank of the Rhone River, in order to observe how they behaved in high water levels The Times reported.
The team separated the ants into groups of 60 consisting of queens while also giving 10 of the brood ants to a few of the teams to look after them.
Team members found the worker ants put the queen mother ant in the middle of the raft, while larval and pupal ants went underneath the structure The Times reported.
The worker ants also placed their bodies on the bottom of the raft where the water was.
