Wait shit this isn't a meme.... uhhhhh. Interesting anyways

Do the bottom ones drown?

I remember hearing about this in reports from major hurricanes in the South. Sounds pretty horrifying to be stranded on a roof or floating around on your own makeshift raft and then happening upon one of these ant rafts of doom.

Edit: thanks for the nightmares everyone. That'll teach me to read Lemmy right before bedtime.

it is very appreciated whether meme or not.

These poor fellas are having a worse time than the big bunch

My first thought was floating along and brushing up against it, absolutely terrifying.

Hey guys… wait up!

The ones with a small leaf boat in the bottom right corner are vibing though

They actually take turns so they all get air

They bit the T A R outta me

On the bright side the river is lower than when I took this picture, so they might've lived!

I got a stick to get them to land, and what do they do to repay me! THEY BITE MEE

Can confirm, or if you have to walk in the water. Just one more thing to watch out for. Regular ants are bad enough, fire ants can all go to hell.

Someane save them, use your arm if you have to!

It's une échappée from le peloton.

They do two things: they float in rafts, and they chomp!

middle school, 1970's NW Florida... our phys. ed. field would flood out pretty bad whenever it would rain a lot, so on those occasions we'd have a free period to just screw around and socialize. On this particular day, me, a scrawny little bug-eyed ginger kid who got picked on pretty regularly, was being chased by a group of other kids who really wanted to torture me some more. I decided to veer off through the knee-deep flooded PE grounds, which allowed me to escape my tormentors, but also gave me the opportunity to learn first hand that fire ants do indeed float in large masses, and are quite eager to swarm up on the first thing that gets within reach.

Fun story - as a kid my backyard in-ground pool would occasionally get these grapefruit sized ant rafts. No idea why or how they would do it, but somehow they'd find themselves floating around in there. And if you don't look too closely it just looks like a dead leaf that landed in the pool.

Dove in one hot summer day. Came up for air. Facefull of ants. Never again.

the crickets at the top seem to be vibing too

Do the bottom ones drown and the top ones just hold them together? Or do they rotate shifts?

Amazing

Are you secretly a fireant?

With no profit incentive either! What morons!

Not sure if there's anything special about fire ants but when regular ants build bridges, yeah the bottom ones drown.

You are asking the right questions. And I suspect the bottom ants offer themselves as sacrifice.

How do they eat and sleep if they're floating around stuck like that for weeks?

As a kid I slid down a slide once into fire ants

Or masochist.

And the one on some blades of grass with a view of everything

They trap air between their bodies and extremities, that's how they float as well.

https://xkcd.com/1610/

Ants together strong

Oh that makes sense, yeah.

Not enough fire. Flamethrower those suckers.

We'll allow it