Research Shows Army Ants Link Bodies to Make Living Bridges

A team of researchers filmed Army ants building living bridges by linking their bodies to span gaps and create shortcuts. The ants, which live in rainforests in Central and South America, form the bridges to facilitate travel and maximise speed, but disassemble the bridges in seconds when they become too long so as to slow the traffic walking over them.

The team included researchers from the University of Sydney’s Insect Behaviour and Ecology Lab, the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, the University of Konstanz, the United States’s New Jersey Institute of Technology, Princeton University and George Washington University. Credit: Chris R Reid, Matthew Lutz & New Jersey Institute of Technology