"Weaver ants' feet have an incredibly strong gripindividual members of one species can, without slipping, hold an entire dead bird hanging off the edge of a table. And the mighty insects rarely work alone, often teaming up to haul and fold oversized leaves as they build their foliage-filled homes. Scientists have now found that as teams of Asian weaver ants gain more members, they strategically use their grippy feet to become ever more efficient at pulling leaf tips."
"In a measurable phenomenon called the Ringelmann effect, the more humans join a team, the less effort each individual member tends to exert; researchers generally attribute this to reduced motivation and the difficulty of coordinating more people. When you're pulling on a rope, like a tug-of-war, it's actually less efficient to have more people lined up, says Macquarie University biologist Chris Reid, co-author on a new study in Current Biology."
Asian weaver ants possess exceptionally grippy feet; individual members can hold an entire dead bird without slipping. The ants commonly cooperate to haul and fold oversized leaves when building foliage-filled nests. A paper leaf tip connected to a force-measuring device showed single ants pulling 59 times their weight on average, while individuals in groups of 15 pulled 103 times their weight. Per-capita pulling force increases with group size, producing sharper efficiency gains as more ants join. Ants assemble into short chains of two to four, with front individuals bending their legs and exerting strong pulls to draw leaf tips inward.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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