When floods hit, fire ants do something amazing. They link together and build a living raft that floats. Researchers at Georgia Tech wanted to know how it works. They found that the ants grip one another with their jaws and legs at a force of 400 times their own body weight. Then they froze some rafts and scanned them inside. Each ant was connected to almost five neighbors, and averaged nearly 14 connections. Out of 440 ants scanned, 99 percent had every leg attached to a neighbor. That connection keeps the raft together in rough currents. No ant survives the flood alone, but together they float. The church is meant to be like that, holding on to each other when the waters rise.
