The fire ants formed a solid tower to overcome obstacles

Hundreds of thousands of fire ants climbed on each other to form a strong high tower to overcome or escape obstacles.

The tower is a massive building made up of hundreds of thousands of fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) , shaped like the miniature Eiffel Tower, according to the International Business Times yesterday. Each ant can withstand a hundred times more weight than body weight without being crushed.

Scientists found that fire ants could form a tower with a pillar in the middle entirely by accident. The team at the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, left a camera in the ants for three hours while the filming time was expected to be two hours.

Fire ants stacked up into tall towers.(Video: YouTube).

"We do not expect to see anything interesting in the remaining hour, so we speed up the video time by 10 times in real time. We are amazed at the different movements of said ants, " said Craig Tovey, research author in the Royal Society Open Science magazine.

The tower formed in about 20 minutes. Researchers believe that they create this structure to find food in difficult-to-reach places or to escape danger from the underground."Without pre-planning, using trial and error processes, they create bell-shaped structures that help us survive," said David Hu, co-author and researcher.

Ants will constantly crawl to the top of the tower until they reach the empty spot on the tower support. They will stick together to add more types to climb up and form the next building block of the building.

The ants give up extraordinary efforts to support each other and keep the tower stable.

Video fast forward also indicates that even when completed, the tower still cannot resist gravity. Ants slide down but are so slow that their eyes are hard to notice. However, ant colonies give up extraordinary efforts to support each other and keep the tower stable.

"We found that fire ants could bear 750 times the body's weight without being injured, but they seemed most comfortable when supporting three other fire ants on their backs , " Tovey said.