Why can I flick an ant off my kitchen counter and it doesn't sustain any (visible) injuries?

   

Say you have an ant that weighs 1 milligram and has an approximate belly-surface area of 1 square mm. When it does a belly flop on your kitchen floor from the counter top, its 1 mm square belly has to support 1 mg of mass landing on it. Well.. what if the ant was the size of a horse? Let's increase the dimensions of the ant by 1000. This would put the weight of the ant at the weight of a horse. Now it weighs 1000x1000X1000 milligrams, and its belly surface area is 1000x1000 mm. It's mass has gone up 1,000,000,000 times, but its surface area has only increased 1,000,000 times, so now, every square mm of its belly has to support 1000 milligrams landing on it.  The weight will be far too much to handle for the giant ant. Normal sized ants can fall from great distances because the material that their exoskeleton is made of can support the weight of a tiny ant.