How do insects manage to lift loads that exceed their own body weight?
Answered by a Doctor of Biological Sciences:
Is an Ant Really Stronger Than an Elephant?
Ants are considered among the strongest creatures on Earth — just walk up to an anthill and watch its residents expertly drag twigs that are four to five times their own length. Now imagine what log you would need to be able to carry to match this insect in strength — something weighing roughly 1,500 kg. That’s about two cubic meters of pine.
Interestingly, individuals of very different sizes can live within the same anthill. For example, the weight of a red wood ant ranges from 2 to 20 mg. A five- to tenfold difference in size can sometimes occur even within the same colony! It’s roughly as if your own sibling weighed 300–400 kg. A person of that weight would barely be able to move at all, yet ants — both large and small — run quickly and carry heavy loads with ease.
Here we need to draw a distinction between “lifting” and “carrying.” An ant is capable of moving a very large weight, but the heaviest objects it still drags along the ground.
Both the ant and the human are stronger than the elephant
Lifting is a different matter entirely — and here humans have something to boast about too. Elite strongmen can deadlift nearly three tons. The record held by American Paul Anderson stands at 2,844 kg. Lifting overhead is a much smaller figure. The all-time record there was set by Soviet and Belarusian weightlifter Leonid Taranenko — 266 kg. Several athletes have managed to break the triple-bodyweight barrier, pressing a weight three times their own body mass in the clean and jerk.
However, what a person can carry for a sustained period is roughly their own body weight — for instance, another human being. An elephant — also recognized as one of nature’s great strongmen — can carry a load no heavier than one-third of its own body mass. So both the ant and the human are stronger than the elephant (in relative terms). An ant can carry loads up to 50 times its own weight, but only by dragging them.
Based on my own observations, ants have been seen carrying loads 14 to 15 times their own body weight. That means an individual weighing 10 mg could transport up to 150 mg. What’s more, ants are capable of hauling such burdens not only across flat surfaces, but also up very steep — sometimes nearly vertical — walls of their anthill.
So how do ants carry such heavy loads?
First and foremost, it comes down to size: the smaller the body, the greater the relative weight a creature can carry. This is partly explained by a biological principle — body weight is proportional to body length cubed, while muscle cross-section is proportional to body length squared. Therefore, the smaller the organism, the more muscle it has per unit of body weight, and the stronger it is.
In addition, insects are built differently. They have an exoskeleton, which changes the biomechanics of the body and absorbs a significant portion of the load. Modern exoskeleton technology developed for humans can multiply a person’s carrying capacity by four to five times. Ants come equipped with this “suit” from birth.
Ants also have another advantage — six powerful legs with gripping claws, which greatly increases their traction on any surface. This is critically important: to drag a heavy load, you need a reliable anchor point.
That is why an ant can carry enormous weight without harming itself. Yet even the ant is not the champion weightlifter of the animal kingdom — that title belongs to the dung beetle. It can roll a load up to 1,100 times its own body weight. But roll, not lift.
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