World’s fastest ant clocks nearly a meter per second

Making the exploit even more remarkable, the Saharan silver ant hits top speed racing at midday across desert sands that reach 60 degrees Celsius, the researchers reported in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

A quartet of researchers from the Universities of Ulm and Freiburg in Germany tracked down Cataglyphis bombycina in the Tunisian desert and set up a field lab as a race course. “Once we had located a nest, it was simply a matter of connecting an aluminum channel to the entrance and placing a feeder at the end to lure the ants out,” said lead author Sarah Pfeffer.Pfeffer and her team also excavated a nest and transported it back to Germany, where they recorded C. bombycina’s running prowess in cooler climes.As expected, when the temperature dropped to a chilly 10 C, the ant slowed down by more than a third.

The scientists also discovered that at its fastest, C. bombycina would switch from running to a gallop, with all six feet off the ground at regular intervals. Saharan silver ants are active outside their nests for only about 10 minutes a day, during which they search for heat-stricken lizards and other prey that they can pick apart and carry home.

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