Scientists discover world's fastest ant
The Saharan silver ant can put in 50 strides a second covering a distance of nearly a metre
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Your support makes all the difference.Scientists have discovered the world’s fastest ant which runs at speeds equivalent of 360mph in humans.
The Saharan silver ant – named after where it lives – can put in 50 strides a second, covering a distance of nearly a metre (85.5cm). To put this in perspective Usain Bolt does four strides a second.
The ants scavenge the corpses of other creatures during the hottest part of the day where temperatures can reach 60C.
The length of their strides quadrupled from 4.7mm to 20.8mm as their speed accelerated, according to the paper published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
The ants also switched from running to galloping, with all six feet of the ground simultaneously and each foot only touching the ground for seven milliseconds at a time.
“These features may be related to the sand dune habitat. [This technique] could prevent the animal’s feet from sinking too deeply into the soft sand,” said lead researcher Harald Wolf from the University of Ulm in Germany.
“Even among desert ants, the silver ants are special”, he added.
Scientists recorded the speed of the ants by mounting their camera on top of a tunnel going into the ants’ nest.
They would now like to study their muscle contraction speeds which they believe could be the fastest ever discovered.
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