
Army ant death spirals are creepy enough as is — but they can also reach terrifying sizes. Mental Floss reports that a scientist observed a death spiral in Guyana which reached 1,200 feet in circumference; it took each ant 2.5 hours to complete a single loop. This spiral lasted for two days, "with ever increasing numbers of dead bodies littering the route," until enough ants managed to break free from the chain.
If your heart is a bit warmer than that scientist's, you may want to free ants from their spiral. To do that, AntsAuthority suggests forming a new path using scented items you may have on hand. You'd think that, by now, army ants would've evolved a way to naturally escape their spirals. But, as NPR points out, a few thousand dead ants per year isn't so bad in a colony of many millions, so evolving an anti-death-spiral protocol hasn't been much of a priority for army ants.
Many have interpreted the ant death spiral as nature's metaphor — a parable with a message akin to "Don't always follow the crowd" or "Be wary of leaders who are just as blind as you." Thus, it should come as no surprise that this phenomenon has also inspired art. Perhaps the best example is the song "Spiral of Ants" by Lemon Demon (via YouTube), with the following chorus (posted on Genius): "Over and over / The pheromones, the overwhelming harmony / Consuming the colony / The Circle rules your life."
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qL7Up56eZpOkunCEkW9scGxfqbWmedOrrK2gXZeyqbXNnWStoJVivamxzaiknqafo3qwsoytn55lkaPBbrDEmquhZaOltrOty2g%3D