‘Superefficient’ weaver ants show remarkable strength in numbers

From Science Magazine.

From the African tropics to the islands of the South Pacific Ocean, a few species of weaver ant make their living among the trees—by sculpting multilevel homes out of living leaves. To glue leaves together into intricate nests, though, groups of weaver ants must team up to bend leaves far bigger than they are into the right shapes.

In 2025, researchers showed another impressive feature of this collaborative construction: Each weaver ant can pull on a leaf much harder when in a group than when it works alone. The ants’ sticky feet and coordinated legwork, the team believes, improve the ants’ collective efficiency—a finding that may provide insights into how to build and coordinate swarms of robots that work together.

Learn more: https://scim.ag/48T5tCf

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