Today’s blog gives a big hats off to army ants for coming up with a great military secret, how to avoid potholes! Lots of soldiers have to travel over miles and miles of incredibly rough terrain, and army ants are no exception. Unfortunately, they don’t have any road machinery or a government budget to fill in those holes or level out the bumps on the road. What do they do instead? They rely on the one thing they do have, an incredibly strong body! If you take in account the difference in body size, ants are much stronger than people. The world’s strongest weightlifters can’t even come close! What does this have to do with road construction? It turns out that ants will block potholes by laying their own bodies across the hole. When an ant comes across a hole, he sizes it up—too big, too small, or just right? If it is too big or small, it will pass the hole by. This continues until an ant that is just the right size plugs the hole up. The rest of the ant army then marches over the ant, sometimes for hours. When the whole army has passed by, the any picks himself up and follows the last members of the army home! Let’s hope he gets a good back rub once he gets there!