These hymenopterans can carry objects much heavier and more bulky with their jaws than their own weight and size , which, depending on the species, ranges between 0.75 and 5 millimeters. For example, ants of the genus Atta carry leaves fifty times heavier than themselves.
In 2008, Thomas Endlein, an insect biomechanics expert at the University of Cambridge, captured an Asian weaver ant, Oecophylla smaragdina, lifting a weight of 500 milligrams ( one hundred times more than herself ), a feat that on a human scale would amount to that of a man lifting an 8-ton with his teeth.
To achieve this, these insects have developed different adaptations , such as the large contractile muscles that move their jaws. However, the key is in their small size, which gives them a better relationship between their mass and the force they can exert than that of other larger organisms.
