The world’s fastest ant clocks record speed of 108 times its own body length

Enlarge / A soldier Saharan silver ant (Cataglyphis bombycina) in the desert at Douz, Tunisia. (credit: Harald Wolf)

Saharan silver ants routinely brave the blazing-hot midday sun in the desert to forage for food. That's a time of day when sand temperatures can be as high as 140F (60C), and many insects perish under those conditions, making it prime foraging time. But it's also risky for the silver ants. Perhaps that's why they are also one of the fastest creatures on the planet, capable of covering their own body length 108 times in a single second, according to a new paper in the Journal of Experimental Biology. That's equivalent to a human being running roughly a nine-second mile.

Silver ants have a number of ways to deal with the harsh desert conditions. Their silver appearance, for instance, is due to small triangular hairs that help them regulate temperature. The ants also have strong navigational skills, often finding pockets of shade under small rocks or blades of grass. And they return regularly to their nests to cool off. Being able to move across the sand quickly is key to their survival-and anyone who has walked or run on a beach knows that the granular nature of sand can slow down movement and expend more energy than walking or running on, say, a dry salt pan.

Harald Wolf, a neurobiologist at the University of Ulm in Germany, noticed the presence of silver ants (Cataglyphis bombycina) during a trip to the Tunisian desert to study one of its larger cousins, Cataglyphis fortis. He returned to the Tunisian town of Douz with his team in 2015 to study the creatures more closely.

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