People who have watched Disney's animation "Bug Crisis" will be impressed by those hard-working and strong ants, right? Although they have little physique and strength, they can accomplish surprising feats when they work together.
Definitely not a picture of PS, the ant life under these lenses is real!
Russian photographer Andrey Pavlov thus came up with an idea: to reproduce the scene in the animation with real ants, conveying the collective power of ants to people.
His creative scenes include ants working together to build huts, carrying building materials and food, and joining forces against enemies, but even romantic scenes similar to watching the sunset and flying on leaves, showing readers the animal's "small stature, big charm".
A new study recently published in Biomechanics shows that ants' neck joints can withstand 5,000 times their own weight. But Thomas Enderling, a researcher at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom who studies ant foot adhesive padding, believes that although ants can withstand 5,000 times the force, weight bearing is another matter.
The weight that can be carried is generally much smaller. There are several reasons for this, including muscle strength, structural hardness, and balance. "For small animals, muscle strength is generally not too much of an issue, because smaller animals generally have higher muscle strength relative to their own weight. However, balancing weight is an issue. First, ants have to lift heavy objects from the ground, which is a tricky problem, especially when the items are irregularly shaped or unusually heavy. Secondly, it is not easy to balance the objects above the head when walking, and it is necessary to carefully prevent the objects from slipping off. ”
Engineers can spark their design ideas by studying ants, micro-robotics is an example, and the fusion of biology and engineering to build small, semi-intelligent robots is one of the most exciting new technologies. These inexpensive miniature robots can explore, monitor and remediate the environment and perform other tasks with limited power.