Surprising teamwork ants use to double their strength

Weaver ants have controlled teamwork hacking that humans have never been able to: they actually work harder as their teams grow.

Instead of relaxing like people in large groups, these ants double their traction power by dividing the roles – some anchor while others shoot. Scientists call it a “force ratio”, a strategy that strengthens their channels with each new member.

Fourmis teams challenge the secular problem

Weaver’s ants seem to have removed a teamwork challenge that has disturbed people for centuries: when human groups are growing, individuals generally make less effort. New conclusions reported in Current biology reveal that the weavers do the opposite, each ant becoming stronger as the group is developing.

This drop in human effort was described for the first time by the French engineer Max Ringelmann in 1913. In experiments measuring the students pulling strings, he discovered that although the total attraction force increased as more and more participants joined, the individual effort of each person decreased.

Ringelmann’s observation has since been seen in countless contexts, from office committees to sports teams. However, according to the behavioral environmentalist Madelyne Stewardson of Macquarie University, who led the recent study, Weaver Ants improves their creation of a cooperative nest while more and more members join the effort.

Outperforming the Ringelmann effect

“Each individual ant almost doubled its traction force as the size of the team increased – it actually improves to work together as the group Grossira,” said Stewardson.

Research shows that these ants form very effective teams where individuals increase, rather than decrease, their contributions as the group develops.

Tisserands ants (Oecophylla smaragdina) are small insects living in trees that live in tropical regions of Africa, Asia and Australia. They are famous for building aerial nests by connecting their bodies to chains to fold the leaves and fixing them with the silk produced by their larvae.

Measure the power of ants in action

The detainees and the behavioral environmentalist and co-author of the supervisor, Dr. Chris Reid of the Macquarie, the Macquarie Natural Sciences School, worked with an international team to measure and analyze the force that the ants of different sizes could apply during the construction of their nests.

The researchers have implemented seductive experiences of weavers’ ant colonies to form shooting chains to move an artificial leaf linked to a force counter.

“Ants divide their work into two jobs: some are actively shooting while others act as anchors to store this draw force,” explains Stewardson.

How does the force ratchet work

The co-directed author, Dr. Daniele Carlesso, the University of Konstanz and Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany, who was a doctoral student in Macquarie during research, said the team developed a theory called “Ratchet de Force” to issue the hypothesis of the way it works.

“The work that each ant accompanies depends on its position in the chain,” explains Dr. Carlesso. “The ants at the back of the chains extend their body to resist and store the traction force, while the ants at the front continue to actively shoot.”

“No one has planned to use a method similar to that used by ants in order to generate force in swarms of robots on several legs, but we plan to do so.”

Dr David Labonte of Imperial College LondonCo-author on the newspaper, says that the team found that this method was essential to increase the contribution by individual as the team increased.

“Longer ants channels have more adhesion on the ground than unique ants, so that they can better resist the strength of the leaf that pulls back,” explains Dr. Labonte.

“Long channels effectively store the traction force for individual friction ants – together, the team seems to work as a ratchet.”

From anti -robotic hills

Dr. Reid says in addition to providing a fascinating overview of the natural world, discovery could also help scientists design better teams of robots.

When you work in teams, current robots can only come out of the same force as when they are alone, making a linear increase in the exit of force. Weaver’s ants show that there is much more potential.

“No one has planned to use a method similar to that used by ants in order to generate force in swarms of robots on several legs, but we plan to do so,” explains Dr. Reid.

Related work has already shown that robots with more legs on the ground, inspired by central-groves, can better perform on complex terrain.

“Robots programming to adopt cooperative anti -inspiration strategies of ants, such as the force ratchet, could allow teams of autonomous robots to work together more effectively, fulfilling more than the sum of their individual efforts,” explains Dr. Reid.

Reference: “Teamwork deleted in Tisserands ants” by Madelyne Stewardson, Daniele Carlesso, David Labonte and Chris R. Reid, August 12, 2025, Current biology.
DOI: 10.1016 / J.Cub .2025.07.038

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