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8.4.08

how aNts suRvive fLoods?

antsOh well I haven't thought of that until I bump into this old article of the Awake magazine. It captured my attention right away, and yeah right.. how do ants survive floods? What do they do when it rains? Though not all ant species live underground, some that do have a remarkable flood-survival techniques. They react to as little as a single drop of water places in the nest entrance by making alarm runs through the nest. They use odor trails to lead nest mates into closed entrance galleries and sometimes out of the nest altogether. In no more than 30 seconds, they are able to mobilize most of the colony. Other species of ants survive by moving up through the ground level, form large masses that include adults, the queen and her brood, and float on the rising water. They survive the raft eventually anchors itself on grasses, and the survivors return to the nest when the waters dry up.
How cool is that? They survived flood though they don't know how to swim! I guess I'll look for some ant colony and try to observe them when it rains, hahaha!

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