TROPICAL RAINFORESTS: The Understory

Leaf Cutter Ants, in Perspective

Imagine...the quarter-inch ant as now being six feet [the size of a man]. It would run along the trail for some ten miles at a speed of 16 miles per hour. It would cover each mile in three minutes and forty-five seconds, a velocity close to the human record. The now six-foot ant would pick up a burden of 750 pounds and speed back toward the nest at 15 miles per hour, covering each mile in four minutes.
excerpted from Int'l Expeditions packet, 1993.


Continued: Rainforest floor

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