can an ant survive a fall from the empire state building

One of her research questions is why ants that spend their days foraging are leaner than 'fat' ants who stay in the nest.

Dr Elva Robinson, Royal Society research fellow at York University, is studying how ants work together to choose nest sites by fitting tiny RFID tags to individual ants. Larger nests further north help ants keep warm: in Northumberland, hairy wood ants have made nests that are larger than the Empire State Building, relative to their size.Įxperiments to learn more about these social creatures can be as ingenious as their miraculous lives. It appears to have a fatal attraction to electricity.Īnts' nests vary enormously between and even among species. The pharaoh has swarmed into hospitals and once bit babies in incubators in former East Germany.Īnother power-crazed invader is Lasius neglectus, the Asian super ant: it was first found in Britain when 35,000 carcasses were discovered in one electrical junction box at Hidcote Manor in Gloucestershire. This warmth-loving insect can only survive in northern Europe with help from humans and appears attracted to electric currents, perhaps because it can detect heat this way.

The species of ant was not revealed (there are 12,000 vastly different ant species known to science and perhaps 90,000 still to be discovered) but one suspect is the pharaoh ant, named according to one legend because Linnaeus found it in a mummy.

Can an ant survive a fall from the empire state building