Ants to the Rescue!

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Behavior
Biodiversity
Edward Hessler

In a report in The American Naturalist, we learn that desert harvester ants (Veromessor pergandei) are willing to risk trying to free colony mates entangled in spider webs. They even go further when successful, dismantling the web afterward. According to a short report published in Science, "about 6% of rescuers got stuck in the silk themselves or were captured by the spider lurking nearby."

The article includes a short film of this behavior.