Ants create stable tunnels in nests, much like humans play Jenga

This article is remarkable in its ability to completely misreport the research it claims to be describing.

Quotes from the article:

> A new Caltech study found that ants search for and remove loose grains of soil when digging their tunnels, much like humans remove loose blocks while playing Jenga.

> The ants tap the individual grains to assess the mechanical forces being exerted upon them.

In fact, this is completely wrong, and is exactly the opposite of what the researchers found. The idea that the ants tap dirt grains like a Jenga player was a *hypothesis* that the researchers held *prior* to beginning their work:

> "We hypothesized that maybe ants were playing Jenga."

> "We thought maybe they were tapping grains of soil, and that way they could assess the mechanical forces on them."

But their research showed that this is NOT what the ants do:

> "It turns out that by removing grains in this pattern that we observed, the ants benefit from these circumferential force chains as they dig down."

> "What we discovered was that they didn't seem to 'know' what they are doing," Andrade says. "They didn't systematically look for soft spots in the sand. Rather, they evolved to dig according to the laws of physics."

Source: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/the-science-of-undergroun...

Good feedback.