ANTS that live in the Amazonian treetops have a remarkable survival strategy. When blown off a branch, they glide back to the safety of their tree.
Cephalotes atratus ants live tens of metres above ground, where gusts of wind are common. Now Stephen Yanoviak at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and his colleagues have worked out how the ants avoid beng blown to the ground and stranded.
They found that the ants turn feet first in mid-air and swoop back to their home trunk. Of 120 worker ants dropped from branches 27 metres high, 85 per cent landed safely, and most marched back to their original location within 10 minutes (Nature, vol 433, p 624).
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