What height would an ant have to fall from for it to die due to the impact

Well?

your own body height.

high enough to freeze, asphyxiate or dehydrate, I reckon.

some people die after being punched and fall to the ground where they bang their heads and die.

Id say you could probably do it from less than 5′ if you were really unlucky.

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It’s physically impossible to kill an ant by making it fall in earths atmosphere. They’d have reached terminal velocity (fairly slow due to their relatively high air resistance) by about the height of a house. Since they survive that quite easily, they’d survive dropping out of a plane too.

From high enough up to make the ants look like people.

It’s physically impossible to kill an ant by making it fall in earths atmosphere. They’d have reached terminal velocity (fairly slow due to their relatively high air resistance) by about the height of a house. Since they survive that quite easily, they’d survive dropping out of a plane too.

Pics or it didnt happen.

Depends on what it’s landing on, doesn’t it?

To rephrase after what distance falling dose an ant reach terminal velocity? Given this terminal velocity would the force be enough to kill the ant?

I expect that the impact from an ant falling at terminal velocity would not kill it, therefore it would have to be falling from such a height that it starved to death.

You’ve got to love a forum that can have this as a topic!

may i asked what prompted this line of enquiry?

damn good question however

I’ve been told that an ant won’t die if it falls…it’s not heavy enough for it’s own body weight to affect it if it was to fall from any height and land…I was in high school and was either in physics or biology, but it was due to the overall weight of the ant and the shape of them…they were pretty lightweight and they were inherently strong creatures so they had strong bodies for their size which meant if they fell from a height they wouldn’t die from the impact.

And windspeed?

Does the ant in question have any pre-existing medical conditions? If it had a tiny dodgy ticker the fright might kill it.

By way of clarification. I’m not an ant doctor. Or vet.

It doesn’t help the original question but I know a spider that survived a centrifuge, which pulls 2500G ish

Anything mouse-sized or smaller will survive a fall from any height.

A trip from 4′ will kill you due to rotation and you landing head first. 12′ and you should land on your feet (but you will break them).

It was a long time ago when I had to sign site pemits so I could be wrong.

What if it fell onto a conveyor belt? I imagine it could twist a little ankle, then not be able to function, get hungry and die. That should answer your question.

PJ!!!!!!!

Some ants have wings on them.

Also, I was told that an elephant would fall so fast its trunk and/or legs would get ripped off by the air . Probably trunk first, as there is no bone in there, Knowing this means I can’t enjoy the film Operation Dumbo Drop.

Fat sky divers wear baggy suits, skinny ones wear skin tight suits so they can fall at the same speed and do formations and tricks together.

I’ve had a heavy weekend. This topic is giving me the fear.

Anything mouse-sized or smaller will survive a fall from any height.

My watch fell about 4 feet and didn’t survive and it isn’t a big watch!

If you strap a trunk filled with lead onto its back, before pushing it out of a plane, it will die.

Its the only way to be sure.

Why shove a ant off a cliff when you can kill them with the sun and a magnifying glass.

Red ant or black ant? That’s crucial info we’re missing

It’s a hot muggy day on the steep slopes of a Malaysian rainforest. About 60 feet (20 m) above the jungle floor, a small brownish-red acrobat ant clambers out of a nest hidden under the whitish-gray bark of a macaranga tree. Locking clawed back feet into the tree trunk, she follows an ant-laid chemical trail down the trunk to forage for insects. A monkey hurtles past, brushing her off. Falling, the ant wildly splays her legs like a parachute to slow her descent, and spirals downward, picking up speed. In less than a second, she reaches terminal velocity, about 4 mph (6.4 km/hour), and falls at that speed until she hits ground. She crawls away — unhurt — to search for a chemical path back home, high above.

How do ants fall such vast distances and survive? Easy. Two factors save them:
– They have so little mass relative to their air resistance that they fall slowly and, therefore, have little energy to dissipate when they hit.
– Their bodies are tiny deformable tanks, well designed to absorb blows.
Falling slowly
Ants, like all objects falling through the atmosphere, have a terminal velocity that depends on their shape, size, and mass. An ant picks up speed as she falls through the air. The air, in turn, resists her movement with a force proportional to the square of her speed. Eventually she reaches a speed at which the upward drag forces exactly balance her downward weight and she stops accelerating. That speed is her terminal velocity.
The terminal velocity of a small to medium ant is about 4 mph (6.4 km/hour), according to the physics department of the University of Illinois. An ant would fall faster, given a ball-like shape, but the ant’s no dummy. She thrusts her legs out, presenting more surface to the air, to fall slower, like a flat sheet of paper instead of a balled-up sheet. Indeed, a man has a terminal velocity of about 125 mph (200 km/hour) with arms and legs fully extended to catch the wind like a parachute and about 200 mph (320 km/hour) when curled into a ball. An ant slows similarly.
But, it isn’t falling that hurts, it’s the sudden stop. Hitting ground, however, reaps the big benefits of falling slowly. When the ant hits, she must dissipate her falling (kinetic) energy in order to halt. That kinetic energy depends on the square of the velocity — not just velocity. So she must dissipate much less energy on impact, than say a man falling at a higher velocity. An ant goes 4 mph when she hits — about 1/30th times slower than a falling man on impact. She absorbs only 1/26,000,000th (1/26 millionth) times the energy of the man (assuming an ant weighs 1/10th of an ounce (0.3 g) and a man 180 pounds (82 kg)). No wonder the man probably dies and the ant walks away, unhurt.
“Sufficiently small animals cannot be hurt in a fall from any height: A monkey is too big, a squirrel is on the edge,

taken from happy news !!

Do ants get deep vein thrombosis?

what is the windspeed velocity of an unladen ant?

Is the ant wearing a helmet?

You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes.

From J B S Haldane, On Being The Right Size. You might enjoy that if you’re interested in questions like this.

You’ve got to love a forum that can have this as a topic!

Innit though? 😀 Brilliantage.

may i asked what prompted this line of enquiry?

damn good question however

Praps best not to ask really; who knows what goes on in the fevered mind of the GluptonSmee? 😯

It’s a hot muggy day on the steep slopes of a Malaysian rainforest. About 60 feet (20 m) above the jungle floor, a small brownish-red acrobat ant clambers out of a nest hidden under the whitish-gray bark of a macaranga tree. Locking clawed back feet into the tree trunk, she follows an ant-laid chemical trail down the trunk to forage for insects. A monkey hurtles past, brushing her off. Falling, the ant wildly splays her legs like a parachute to slow her descent, and spirals downward, picking up speed. In less than a second, she reaches terminal velocity, about 4 mph (6.4 km/hour), and falls at that speed until she hits ground. She crawls away — unhurt — to search for a chemical path back home, high above.

How do ants fall such vast distances and survive? Easy. Two factors save them:
– They have so little mass relative to their air resistance that they fall slowly and, therefore, have little energy to dissipate when they hit.
– Their bodies are tiny deformable tanks, well designed to absorb blows.
Falling slowly
Ants, like all objects falling through the atmosphere, have a terminal velocity that depends on their shape, size, and mass. An ant picks up speed as she falls through the air. The air, in turn, resists her movement with a force proportional to the square of her speed. Eventually she reaches a speed at which the upward drag forces exactly balance her downward weight and she stops accelerating. That speed is her terminal velocity.
The terminal velocity of a small to medium ant is about 4 mph (6.4 km/hour), according to the physics department of the University of Illinois. An ant would fall faster, given a ball-like shape, but the ant’s no dummy. She thrusts her legs out, presenting more surface to the air, to fall slower, like a flat sheet of paper instead of a balled-up sheet. Indeed, a man has a terminal velocity of about 125 mph (200 km/hour) with arms and legs fully extended to catch the wind like a parachute and about 200 mph (320 km/hour) when curled into a ball. An ant slows similarly.
But, it isn’t falling that hurts, it’s the sudden stop. Hitting ground, however, reaps the big benefits of falling slowly. When the ant hits, she must dissipate her falling (kinetic) energy in order to halt. That kinetic energy depends on the square of the velocity — not just velocity. So she must dissipate much less energy on impact, than say a man falling at a higher velocity. An ant goes 4 mph when she hits — about 1/30th times slower than a falling man on impact. She absorbs only 1/26,000,000th (1/26 millionth) times the energy of the man (assuming an ant weighs 1/10th of an ounce (0.3 g) and a man 180 pounds (82 kg)). No wonder the man probably dies and the ant walks away, unhurt.
“Sufficiently small animals cannot be hurt in a fall from any height: A monkey is too big, a squirrel is on the edge,

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet…………..here’s someone who did :

dead ant, dead ant, deadantdeadandeadant DEAD ANT!

Brilliant, but as one who has an occasional ant problem: I like the magnifying glass method to insect cleansing and would be willing to consider other ways to “the final solution”. However the debate has convinced me that shovelling ants into a bucket and clambering up on the roof to hurl them off is not a realistic alternative to BOILING THEM WITH WATER. I would be interested in getting a large boiler to supplement the kettle. Off to flea bay now!

molgrips – Member
Anything mouse-sized or smaller will survive a fall from any height.

Drop it from high enough up and it’ll burn up on reentry. You’d need to equip it with an ant-sized spacesuit to stop it from dying from other causes first, though.

Ants do not get DVT as they have all have a daily dose of aspirin and keep hydrated. Those that spend time at altitude where compression stockings (very small ones).

Thank you.

Was the monkey OK?

Given their inherent strength to weight ratio, if I wore ants on my head instead of a helmet would I be immune to injury when falling from my bike? Might wrap the debate up once and for all.

How fat is this ant?