How Ants are Able to Build Underground “Cities”

Many people don’t like to admit it, but plenty of animals and insects are able to do things that our species can’t. It’s also available for ants, as the little creatures can build astonishingly complex structures.

The underground “cities” that ants create are amazing. Once you go beneath an anthill, you’ll find chambers that are used as homes, nurseries, farms, and even dumps. SciTechDaily.com explains how building them is possible.

Do ants “know” how to dig the tunnels, or are they just randomly digging?

A team of scientists from Caltech wanted to find out how ants manage to build such incredible complex structures. Their “cities” can even last for decades. The researchers studied the ants’ habits regarding digging and found some answers to profound questions.

Andrade, the Cecil and Sally Drinkward Leadership Chair and also Executive Officer for Mechanical and Civil Engineering, wanted to know if the ants somehow “know” how to create the tunnels or do they just randomly start to dig.

Andrade declared, as quoted by SciTechDaily.com:

We didn’t interview any ants to ask if they know what they’re doing, but we did start with the hypothesis that they dig in a deliberate way,

We hypothesized that maybe ants were playing Jenga.

Andrade enlisted the help of Joe Parker, an assistant professor of biology and biological engineering. Parker’s research focuses on ants. He said, as cited by SciTechDaily.com:

What Jose and his team needed was somebody who works with ants and understands the adaptive, collective behaviors of these social insects to give them some context for what they were doing.

According to WesternExterminator.com, ants are capable of carrying more than 50 times their own weight.

The new research is described in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.