So I know there are some ants who build a floating raft, but of the ground dwelling species how do they not get inundated?
In: Biology
They build in air pockets where air will be trapped in the nest and also build drains that will take the water away as it recedes.
I’ve seen that certain species crawl will all over one another until they’ve created a floating mass using their bodies. Sure a good bunch on the submerged part will die, but the majority survives.
The other thing is that ants generally have to deal with rain or heavy storms, so I think the tactics they use in those situations carry over to flood conditions.
I am pretty curious of how they deal with rain to begin with.
Burrowing creatures are good at plumbing or they would drown. It is the same way your sink or toilet pipes work, except we want to keep nasty stuff from coming up and they want to keep water out.
It’s capped a P-trap because the pipe resembles the letter P sideways and that bend traps water and gas. It would take a significant amount of pressure to pass, and then it traps up again, like flushing a toilet.
You can see diagrams of ant burrows and beaver’s nests online.
water at their scale works rather differently. things like surface tension are appreciable. it’s entirely possible for them to dig and walk through tunnels water cannot flow through. they can also pick up globules of water and carry them around.
it’s also worth knowing that, while they can certainly drown, ants in an air pocket can actually get oxygen from diffusion.
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