Ants can join together and form rafts to escape floods, sometimes including several thousand ants in a single raft. This works because an ant's exoskeleton is slightly water-repellent, so when thousands of them team up, they can float on top of the water without even getting wet, because the ants at the bottom of the raft can push against the water without breaking its surface tension, forming it into a bubble underneath them. Ants can stay in these raft formations for weeks, if necessary.
More facts about ants:
- There are more than 12,000 species of ants in the world.
- A colony of 40,000 ants has the same number of brain cells as one human.
- Ant colonies form their own garbage dumps, with specific ants in charge of removing waste from inside the colony and taking it to the dump.