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How an ant carries 50 times its own weight

Stop for a moment by an anthill and watch. You will see a tiny ant pulling a leaf five times its size. And sometimes even a dead beetle three times its weight. How is this possible?

An ant weighs only 5 milligrams — that’s 200 times less than a single candy pea. But it can lift a load 50 times heavier than itself! Imagine: if you weighed 30 kg, you would carry 1,500 kg on your back. That’s a car. That is, if you were as strong as an ant — you would go to school with a car on your shoulders instead of a backpack.

The secret is in its body. An ant is so tiny that its muscles don't have to struggle against its own weight, as larger animals do. It has a hard outer skeleton, like a tiny suit of armor, and the muscles are attached from the inside and work like levers. The smaller you are, the stronger you are for your size.

But the most amazing thing is that ants work together. If the prey is too big for one, ten, twenty, a hundred ants appear. They don't fight over who's the boss. They don't push. They just grab and pull in one direction. A colony can carry things weighing thousands of times its own weight.

The next time you see an ant with a leaf, sit down and look closely. You will see the strongest creature on the planet. At your own size.