Falling tree ants swoop back to safety
Tiny ants living in the Amazonian treetops have a remarkable survival strategy - when blown off a branch, they can glide back to the safety of their tree, a new study reveals. Cephalotes atratus ants live in communities tens of metres above the ground where gusts of wind constantly threaten to send them spiralling to the forest floor. That would spell certain death, says Robert Dudley at the University of California at Berkeley, US, and one of the study team. "For these social insects, if you can't find your tree again in the Amazon, you're never going to find your home which means you'll die," he says. So the team, led by Stephen Yanoviak at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, US, has worked out how the ants avoid this fate. The researchers found that falling ants pivot to fall hind-feet-first in midair and swerve in a J-shaped swoop to land on the bark of their home tree trunk .