Ants Build Hanging Bridge to Attack Wasp Nest

imrupak

Astonishing footage captures the moment a million army ants worked together to build a bridge designed to help invade a giant wasp nest.

The highly organized ants were captured on camera in Brazil by an electrical engineer, Francisco Boni.

Boni wrote on Twitter: “Attack of legionary ants (also known as army ants or marabunta) to a wasp honeycomb. Impressive the level of swarm intelligence and collective computation to form that bridge.”

The footage has since been viewed almost 200,000 times.It has gained thousands of retweets and likes.

He added: “When this type of attack happens, the wasps usually escape and the ants do not leave until they’ve completely looted the honeycomb, carrying pupae, larvae and eggs, as well as some adults who did not manage to escape. They can even build across the water!”

He explained the use of the bridge for the ants, saying: “For ants, it is more effective to follow the trail over a bridge that goes down and then up than in an inverted upside down walk.

“Also likely that upside down the ants can’t carry significant loads.”

“Legionary ants” is a term that covers over 200 ant species.

They are generally characterized by their aggressive foraging techniques – such as the one in the video.

Source: https://nypost.com/2018/08/06/ants-build-hanging-bridge-to-attack-wasp-nest/

Video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY5xSOgl2Mg

soothsayer

Unbelievable. Real masterful planning and execution. We humans need to learn from this

Rushcourt71

I read once in an encyclopaedia about animals that ants also build the same or similar kind of bridges to ferry whole swarms of one another over streams and small rivulets.