Ants are renowned for their industriousness. Ask the grasshopper in the story by Aesop. He had to come begging the hardworking ant for food when winter came because he had frittered away his summer.

To understand their strategies for working effectively without clogging traffic jams, researchers studied how fire ants dug tunnels in glass particles that simulated soil. Credit: Rob Felt, Georgia ...

A close-up time-lapse of ants digging and building tunnels in the sand.