Eli5 Why are ants so resistant to dying by falling?
In: 18
It’s not so much that they are resistant to dying by falling. The ant’s mass is so small compared to the body’s surface area that they fall extremely slowly on average about 6.4 km/h or 1.78 m/s for its terminal velocity.
You can compare that to an adult male human which has a terminal velocity of 200 km/h or 55.56 m/s.
The ants achieve this by fanning our their legs to slow them down similar to how a squirrel can theoretically survive a fall from any height because of their size, mass, and fur.
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