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Trap-Jaw Ants Break Speed Records With Jaws
Ant writes to tell us UC Berkeley News is reporting that a species of Ant native to Central and South America is setting speed records with their jaws. The trap-jaw ant has been clocked closing its mandibles at between 78 and 145 miles per hour, said to be the "fastest self-powered predatory strike in the animal kingdom". In addition to blinding speed the ants have also been taped using their jaws to fling themselves into the air.
It does. Certain species of the mantis shrimp are able to strike at a speed of up to 23m/s, whereas the range listed here is 35m/s to 65m/s.
The mantis shrimp is able to manage an acceleration of 10,500g and achieve a force of 1500N at impact. I wonder what the acceleration and force are for this ant. Any physics experts want to chime in?
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
USDA-Imports-Phorid-Flies
Ahhh! We don't learn, do we?
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"And then the gorilla's will freeze to death in the winter." (Simpson's show paraphrase- too lazy to look up the exact dialog for more accurate quote.)
This has not worked too well in the past from my experience/knowledge, as I recall Pennsylvania releasing some type of fly that was a natural foe of the gypsy moths that were denuding PA of it's forests. The flies turned out to be very aggressive against not only the gypsy moths, but also seemed to LOVE mammals also- worst fly bites I ever recieved, and the only time I've been thrown from a horse due to the horse being bitten by an insect. Impressive bucking bronco acts occured from normally mild-mannered equines after the fly's release!
(not much info, but here is a quick Google search- see Biological Controls)
(http://www.ento.psu.edu/extension/factsheets/gyp
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Rather, the insect is so small that strong legs won't contribute much to its overall body mass; making the insect as large as a human would render all of the above impossible, and even if it did get in the air at the scaled height, it'd smash into a puddle of ant guts when it landed. Leg strengh = size squared; body mass = size cubed.
Kent: Ladies and gentlemen, er, we've just lost the picture, but,
uh, what we've seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft
has been taken over -- "conquered", if you will -- by a master
race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this
vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men
or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no
stopping them; the ants will soon be here.
And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to
remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful
in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar
caves.
Trap jaw ants do live in the wild in the southern U.S -- I've studied them in Austin Texas. They're not easy to find as the colonies are very small and the individuals tend to be quite reclusive. They are largish ants (about about 1 cm in length), dark in color, and tend to be fairly slow moving when foraging in leaf litter and under rocks. They walk around with their jaws cocked open and one or two pairs of trigger hairs in the mouth fire the jaw. As the article states a snap of the jaw impales the prey and then the ant stings it. If they fire the jaw on a solid object, the ant goes flying. Either way the jaw emits a loud 'snap' when triggered. Despite the sharp hair-trigger jaw and sting, these ants tend to fall into the "fierce in their nest, but timid in the wild" range of ant behavior.
As amazing as the trap jaw design is, these ants are not unique. The trap jaw concept evolved at least twice in ants. Two collections of ant species on widely separated arms of the ant family tree use a trap jaw mechanism for capturing prey. They share the same jaw design, but have very different head shapes. Ants of genus Odontomachus (the ones in the video) have an odd-shaped lumpy cylindrical head. Those on the other side of the ant family tree (genus Daceton and Strumigenys) have a distinct heart-shaped head. Species of both types occur in the U.S. The Strumigenys that I've seen in the U.S. are very small (about 2 mm) and thrive on similarly tiny creatures found in rotting logs, leaf litter, etc.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
"Journey to the Ants" covers much of this information, including that Odontomachus species have the fastest neural reflex arc known- the time between when their mouth hairs touch something and they start biting it is something like .13 milliseconds. Moral of the story- don't stick your finger in their mouth, you will get bitten.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
(For the humor-impaired, yes I am aware the real reason they jump is because of the moth larva inside it, click it and learn something.
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