As many of you already know, I considered going to grad school for biology, specifically to study insects. Well, not insects, but spiders, and as we all know spiders are not insects.

However, within that discipline you learn a lot about insects. Outside of that discipline you learn a little about insects, and one of the things you hear over and over again is how ants can carry 2,000 times  – or more – their own body weight. Now, we have robots – called MicroTUGs – that can do that as well as described in this story over on the BBC (or BEEB, if you’re a Brit). The article even states that they were designed, in part, by borrowing from ants.

They hope to give them the ability to coordinate and work together in places like construction zones, although for what purpose is unclear. Robots are capable of coordinating with each other already, so hopefully it won’t be too much of an issue.

As is always the case, the seemingly outlandish comparisons have to be made, such as it’s the equivalent of a human dragging around a blue whale, the largest creature on earth. It is, in a very general sense, sort of a valid comparison.

I do have to say this, though: If *you* were shrunk down to the size of an ant, you would also be able to lift 2,000 times your own body weight. Of course, you’d be flinging around at 1,000 miles an hour and die of hunger and thirst in short order, but you could lift much more than your body weight. Whether the way muscles work and the way these robots work is comparable I can’t say, but I just wanted to get that out there.

And let’s not forget about Them, or that this happened (It works in some of my browsers but not others, Fox blocked it on copyright grounds; I’ll see if I can get it unblocked. If you can’t see it, it’s the scene from The Simpsons where Kent Brockman welcomes our new insect overlords).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3WSpbbwQeU&feature=youtu.be

On a side note, see what I have to put up with when it comes to YouTube and this class? Is it or isn’t it? I don’t know! And this isn’t the first time it’s happened.

YouTube is trolling me