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have learned that the “mandibular teeth” of ants - those on the outside of their mouths - are tightly bound together with zinc atoms that make up more than 8 percent of the weight of the tooth.

The zinc atoms are laid out evenly in a way it lets the ants cut the leaves and not suffer any damage. “We could see that the zinc is uniformly distributed in the tooth, which was a surprise,” said PNNL materials scientist Arun Devaraj in a statement.

“We were expecting the zinc to be clustered in nano-nodules.”

Due to the prevalence of zinc, the researchers estimate it’s possible for the ants to use 60 percent or less of the force that they would have to use if their teeth were made from material similar to humans, such as enamel.

This feature could be implemented by engineers, according to University of Oregon Associate Professor Robert Schofield, who led the study.

“Human engineers might also learn from this biological trick,” said Schofield. “The hardness of ant teeth, for example, increases from about the hardness of plastic to the hardness of aluminum when the zinc is added. While there are much harder engineering materials, they are often more brittle.”

During the course of their study, the researchers looked at a piece of an ant tooth and then used a microscope technique known as atom probe tomography, which allowed them to see how the zinc atoms were arranged.

“The plan was to use that technique to really understand how zinc is distributed inside these ant teeth, and how that is leading to the strength that it’s getting,” Devaraj said in an interview with Cnet.