What if entertainment’s next big thing was discovered in a science lab?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Ants. They’re everywhere. But inside each tiny body? A universe of muscles, organs, and armor.
Enter Julian Katzke and team at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. Researchers scanned thousands of rare and common ants. They used a machine that allows us to view inside their bodies ….a hundred times faster than normal!
The result? Over two thousand complete 3D ant models. Scientists everywhere can now dissect them virtually, 3D print them or link bodies to genes.
Forget making AI movie stars, let’s go digitize an ant hill!
Reference: Katzke, J., Hita Garcia, F., Lösel, P. D., Azuma, F., Faragó, T., Aibekova, L., Casadei-Ferreira, A., Gautam, S., Richter, A., Toulkeridou, E., Bremer, S., Hamann, E., Hein, J., Odar, J., Sarkar, C., Zuber, M., Boomsma, J. J., Feitosa, R. M., Schrader, L., … van de Kamp, T. (2026). High-throughput phenomics of global ant biodiversity. Nature Methods, *23*(3), 663–672. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-026-03005-0