No, I’m not talking about building an ark. It’s more complex than that and not necessarily aquatic. Ants accomplish tasks through self-assembly — linking their bodies and forming chains, ladders, walls, or rafts. Sometimes the tasks are mundanely important (get food), other times they are urgently critical to colony survival. During floods, some ants self-assemble into living rafts to protect queens and other vulnerable colony members. Self-assembly is a process in which unorganized parts come together in an organized structure.
Ants are social animals known for working together to solve problems far bigger than any one individual can handle. Like humans, ants enhance their individual response to emergencies by coordinating with others, and different members take on different roles. A recent study showed even more than this specialization — ants have memories of what roles worked best for the situation and their memories persist over time. There’s a lesson for us in the behavior of these humble ants. Humans now face the biggest problems of our species’ existence and consequences are rippling across the earth, touching all life. By acting collectively we can mitigate climate chaos problems.