The fastest ant species in the world

Silver ants can overcome long distances 108 times their body per second and achieve a stride speed 10 times higher than Usain Bolt.

Silver ants living in the sand dunes north of the Sahara are the fastest ants in the world, the German researchers concluded after tracking insects foraging under scorching hot weather at noon. The video shows that the ants are urgently crawling through the hot sand at nearly 1 m / s, equivalent to a domestic cat running about 193 km / h.

When running faster, the more silver ants are in the air and touch all 6 feet to the ground at the same time . At maximum speed, the ants can cross a distance of 108 times the body length per second. "They can fly through the air and the vacuum touches the ground from step to step, even at relatively low speeds , " said Sarah Pfeffer, an animal behavioral researcher at Ulm University in Germany. .

The Sahara silver ant (Cataglyphis bombycina) evolved to run efficiently. Unlike other creatures in the desert that shelter to avoid the intense heat of the noon, for ants, this is the prime time to wander in search of prey. When the desert is hottest, they emerge from their nests and find dead bodies of exhaustion under high temperatures.

Fast speed helps ants survive in the desert.(Photo: Guardian).

To survive, this ant has silver hairs that help reflect the sun. But even with its fur and other adaptive traits, it is virtually impossible for ants to survive temperatures as high as 60 degrees Celsius. They need impressive speed and positioning skills to find food and return to their nests. fastest before turning into a victim of heat.

Before Pfeffer and his colleagues watch the ants race around the desert, they must first find them. Scientists travel to Douz, a town in southern Tunisia, and examine the nearby sand dunes to look for traces of silver ants. After tracking a few ants back to their nest, they placed aluminum trenches on the ground, sprinkled deep or breadcrumbs at the end of the free time. The team mounted a high-speed camera on the track to record the ants running through.

When running at slow speeds, the video reveals ants that coordinate movement with incredible precision, pinching three feet to turn on each time. They can run 85.5 cm per second in 47 steps, 10 times faster than the stride speed of the world's leading runner Usain Bolt. Between the steps, each ant's foot touches the ground only for 7 milliseconds. The results of the study are published in the journal Experimental Biology.