Fire Ants breaking law of physics? [PART 1]

Have you ever wondered how ants can float in water? Many have observed ants (whether on t.v. or real life) ants connecting together to make a raft of some kind, with hundreds of other ants collecting on top. With the entire raft made of ants, and its passengers made of ants, do you ever think about how they do this? Ants outer bodies (exoskeletons) are naturally hydrophobic, or repel water. A single ant can float across the top of the water because of the surface water tension and the ants ability to trap air bubbles near its body. These air bubbles are hard to see, usually located underneath the body. However researchers began to look at those ants that link up together, during a floor for example. How do these ants still float when the physics says their combined body weight should make them sink? Looking at floating fire ants in South America, researches found that when fire ants link up (grabbing each others legs with a force 400 times their body) they are somehow able to collect tiny air bubbles between their mandibles (front legs). Although their combined weight should make them sink, the added air bubbles allow them to float, like a giant raft. You may think "well what about the ants on the bottom, wouldn't they drown?" No, it turns out that those on the bottom stay on the surface of the water and when they do get submerged, the ants flex their grip in unison, causing the bottom ants to return to the surface to breath. In the next part of this post, I will explain how the researches experimented with how the ants did this (it is pretty interesting). I mean, how would you observe a raft full of thousands of ants floating down a river?

Source: Gammon, Katharine. "Fire Ants Assemble as a 'Super-Organism.'" Inside Science News Service. Fox News. 25 April 2011. Web. 26 April 2011.