According to many sites like this one, an ant can apparently lift 50 times its own weight and pull 30 times its weight. Is it true?
Can it be proved using physics? Though most sites agree that an ant can lift many times its own weight, not all agree with exactly how many times its weight. The explanations provided if any are usually vague and do not use specific numbers. Can a specific numerical value be calculated?
Secondly, how is it possible for the ant to pull 30 times its weight? I find it unbelievable. Can anyone explain this?
Best Answer
This is an example of "scaling laws". Have a look at http://hep.ucsb.edu/courses/ph6b_99/0111299sci-scaling.html - for once Wikipedia doesn't have a good article on the subject.
The strength of a muscle is roughly proportional to the area of a cross section through the muscle, so strength is roughly proportional to size squared. That's why I'm a lot stronger than an ant. However the weight of e.g. a boulder is dependant on the volume, so it's proportional to size cubed. So as you increase size, the weight of the boulder increases faster than my strength does. Or to put this another way, as you decrease size your strength decreases more slowly than the weight does. That's why small creatures can lift boulders that are large in proportion to their size.
Whether an ant can really lift 50 times it's weight I don't know, but it can certainly lift many more times it's own weight than I can. The same sort of argument applies to all small creatures. For example it's why a flea can jump much higher relative to it's body size than I can, but I can still jump higher than an elephant!
Do have a look at the link because it goes into a lot more detail than I can here.