On Sunday, a reporter covering the flooding in South Carolina made an interesting discovery: A colony of fire ants were weathering the storm by creating an enormous life raft, made out of themselves. The ants had all linked their limbs together, creating a contiguous mass that readily floats. The reporter subsequently posted a video of it, and it went viral almost immediately. But as it turns out, this isn't a new discovery at all, and the fire ant raft practice is even more amazing than you'd think.

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For years the BBC, National Geographic and Georgia Tech grad student Nathan Mlot have been publishing their findings on how fire ants cope with flooding. Once the colony is endangered by rising waters, a portion of ants start linking up to create a base for the "island," while others start grabbing the colony's eggs and tucking them safely away up top. The queen, too, is ferried to the middle of the island, where she can sit high and dry. And the ants on the bottom of the raft do not become submerged, as the fine hairs on their bodies prevent the water's surface from breaking.

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They even retain buoyancy when researchers, perhaps bored of burning them with magnifying glasses, attempt to dunk them:

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However, nature being nature, it is not all smooth sailing. Fish turn the ant rafts into a Jaws movie:

And as Entomology grad student Alison Bockoven has observed, these rafts can also be formed into living bridges—and incredibly, the ants are somehow able to generate soulful folk music as they work:

To gain a deeper scientific understanding of what causes this behavior, Core77's editorial team reached out to Paul Rudd for comment, but at press time he had not returned any of our messages.