Slashdot Mirror
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.
The average duration of a strike was a mere 0.13 milliseconds, or 2,300 times faster than the blink of an eye.The average duration of a strike was a mere 0.13 milliseconds, or 2,300 times faster than the blink of an eye.
Notice that at no time do my jaws leave my head...
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
My 0.02 cents
Anybody check to see if there were banned substances in the ant?
What i learned from the article.
1) Black ants can jump.
The researchers used a high-speed video camera filming at 50,000 frames per second to visualize the mandible movements.
2) If i want a high-speed camera, become a researcher.
The jumps were detailed at a relatively slower 3,000 frames per second.
3) Jumping is slower than eating.
The average duration of a strike was a mere 0.13 milliseconds, or 2,300 times faster than the blink of an eye.
4) Blinking is slower than eating.
Yet, the researchers note that even when an ant lands on its back or head, the insect is so light that it can still walk away no worse for wear.
5) These ants are light headed.
Have you read my journal today?
welcome our insectoid jaw-flapping overlords.
And I mean it, too. With yaps like that, they'll be stars of international politics in no time flat.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
This ant reminds me of some girls I know...
Unless you don't consider patent lawyers part of the animal kingdom.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
So this is like rocket-jumping in Quake, right?
Pound for pound, fleas have the largest "members" in the animal kingdom. /the more you know
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
At that picnic last weekend, I had no idea where it vanished to.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Perhaps we should be considering Trapjaw Internet protocol as an alternative to RFC 1149? There have been next to no improvements in that protocol - I think it's time...
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
"welcome our insectoid jaw-flapping overlords"
Don't tell me: Another Ann Coulter appearance on Hannity and Colmes last night?
Where were you when the voynix came?
Yes, but white ants have sound fundamentals, and they are deceptively fast. It has been reported that with advancements in genetic engineering, Chinese ants will soon be just as good.
Anyone else uncomfortable with the phrases "pound for pound" and "largest member" being used in the same sentence?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
THe integral of acceleration is velocity. The jerk is the derivative of acceleration.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
It was reported in 2004 that Shrimp have the fastest 'kick'.
sorry, you're right. In my first draft I had been talking about the total distance. But the rest of the comment stands.
Anyone else uncomfortable with the phrases "pound for pound" and "largest member" being used in the same sentence?
Not me. It's comments like those that made me get a Slashdot account.
The best part is watching them flop on the ground like Kid Syndrome being ejected from Mr. Incredible's car.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Let's hope they can retract their tongue at record breaking speeds.
Karma: Excer..ex...excellahhh...realll good (mostly affected by drinking not done in moderation)
Check out the BBC DVD series "Life in the Undergrowth", with the incomparable David Attenborough. The biggest problem with the series is that, at 5 episodes, it's far too short.
the record when she closed her jaws!
He was even more annoying on Celebrity Fit Club. That he broke a record flapping his jaws is no surprise to me.
Gravity is a contributing factor in nearly 73 percent of all accidents involving falling objects. -Dave Barry
The jerk is the derivative of acceleration.
That's awfully rude. What has the derivative of acceleration ever done to you? You owe someone an apology.
(NB: Yes, I know that jerk is a real descriptor of a physical quantity--I'm a physics student. Coincidentally, that also explains why I found it necessary to make so lame a joke.)
Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
"The trap-jaw ant has been clocked closing its mandibles at between 78 and 145 miles per hour"
Shouldn't that be in bites per second?
----------
Still here
http://blogoscare.blogspot.com/
I thought the jerk was a Steve Martin movie.
I guess a jellyfish stings doesn't count as a self-powered predatory strike then. Why?
h e-sting-of-the-jellyfish-natures-fastest-cellular- mechanism/
http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/05/09/t
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
So Mel Gibson's next movie is a remake of "Them!", only the ants are the heroes?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
After watching those videos, I have retracted my previously firm belief that ninjas are mammals. Arthropods can obviously be ninjas as well.
In that first video that ant disappears from the site of the ant that is watching him, trims his toenails and files his tax return in mid air before landing directly behind his unsuspecting neighbor all in less than a second. Amazing.
ôó
They're still here. I live in South Florida and they have spread over the years throughout the entire state. Occaisionally, you will hear about livestock or sometimes even a person in a nursing home or otherwise debilitated being bitten to death by them. Some people have also developed severe allergies to them and a single bite can be fatal for these people if they don't have epiniphrine nearby. Those who can tolerate bites wind up with welts that become pustules and last for days.
The fire ants are very hard to eradicate as once you get rid of them from your yard, they just eventually creep back over from a neighbor's yard. Flooding rains don't help as the ants can simply just raft themselves over the water until it recedes. This is also another way that they spread.
The bait type treatments (Amdro TM, etc.) are somewhat effective, but they're expensive and they don't permanently rid you of these pests. We used to just burn the mounds with gasoline when we were kids, but it's not effective at getting the whole mound and it's ecologically irresponsible as the gas that doesn't burn winds up in the aquafer(sp?).
I did recently see a program where fire ant mounds were being treated in rural areas with a mite that specializes in laying its eggs in the fire ants' skulls. The mite larvae hatch out and then spread to the rest of the mound to lather, rinse, repeat. It looks like this may be an effective natural way of keeping fire ants in check, if they can't be completely eliminated. I think someone at the University of Florida came up with this and if it works, they should be in line for some kind of prize for the research.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
So apparently the insect kingom is perfecting the rocket jump. How long until they get the BFG?
"...fastest self-powered predatory strike..."
So, you've met my x-wife and lived to tell about it, eh?
has been clocked closing its mandibles at between 78 and 145 miles per hour
While reading this story, all I could think about were the talking heads on Fox News...
Wiki's got more cool info
Jonah HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
Come to think of it, Alan Colmes really DOES look like a giant bug.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Here's what I think we should do:
(that was my first, 1-2-3 profit post... I feel a part of the community now)
Wow! This must be a PERSONAL letter, just for me!
Cnidarians (i.e. Jellyfish & Sea Anemones) have stinging cells which are much faster. These cells, called nematocysts, are the fastest things in the animal kingdom. The stingers launch out at speeds well in excess of 300 miles per hour.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
We only want a quiet place to finish working while God eats our brains.
--Bruce Sterling
Sheila Patek has you beat hands down.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Someone really needs to cue the bionic action sound effects from that show onto these ants jumping around, it'd be so perfect...
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
I'm sure the ants knew what they were doing. It wasn't "let's try this stupid stunt out".
Of course it's not the acceleration or speed that kills you, it's the impact.
I was thinking more along the lines of Phase 4.
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.
I wonder if they are given a bit too much credit for "jumping" and "escaping". Isn't it more likely that they simply developed these jaws for the hunting, and never really had to control the accidental discharges that send them flying into the air? I suppose if there were some way to see them actually escaping from something, then it would make sense. Nothing in the article about that though.
ANTS On the Plane. Jumping over a SHARK. With freaking LAZERS on their heads.
Starring:
The One Ant: Keanu Reeves
The Shark: Dennis Hopper
And Sandra Bullock as herself.
You can't handle the truth.
All worker ants are females. Only some winged alates are males. All they do is mate and then die when it is time. Some life for males, huh?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I'm sure the ants knew what they were doing. It wasn't "let's try this stupid stunt out".
Every species has rednecks.
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman
I couldn't remember the name. Phase IV was the best ant movie ever! I was just a kid when I saw that movie on TV, I remember it freaked me out way more than "Them!" ever could.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Pretty low, actually. They store up energy opening their mandibles, and then release it when closing them. That means once they've closed their mandibles, it takes awhile for them to open again.
Kinda...
like...
William...
Shatner.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
..... I'm getting guard Ants.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
I blame that movie for my irrational fear of insects. Seriously, you're right when you say it is the best ant movie ever.
Wait a minute. Another Wilson who is a physics student? Where? I'm at Baylor in Texas. Huzzah for shared surnames and also for physicist jokes!
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Right now? I'm at Purdue, in Health Science. It's physics! Really, it is. Medical physics.
I can't quite puzzle out from your two posts quite what you intended to say. Could you clarify?
.13 ms of motion of an animal's limb, that the value found then will be much higher than the average value for the entire movement. This is a rather puzzling assertion, as it is extremely unlikely to be the case in general. For it to be the case, an enormous acceleration (requiring, of course, a proportionally enormous force) would have to be present initially, followed by a comparably large acceleration in the other direction to slow the limb down to a more normal speed.
It seems that you are suggesting that if one measures the magnitude of the velocity (that is, the speed) in the first
Perhaps what you meant was that the jerk (or even the jerk averaged over time) is quite high in the initial moments of motion. This is much more likely, as there is usually a quite swift change from no acceleration to great acceleration, and then the great acceleration is maintained for some time. Jerk, as you know, is the rate of change of acceleration, so if we go from no acceleration to great acceleration very quickly, the jerk is quite high.
If neither of these are what you meant, please clarify. I'm sure I've simply misunderstood something.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Well, I am pleased to make your acquaintance, kind sir. Do you know Matthew Jones? He is a professor at Purdue, researching High Energy Physics, which is my field. I have worked with him some at Fermilab in Chicago.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Wasn't all of this info about the trap-jaw known at least 10 years ago?
Edward O. Wilson and Bert Holldobler's 1991 (?) book "Journey to the Ants" talks about all of it... the high speeds, the high-framerate camera, the jumping by snapping at something hard, etc etc etc. Maybe I need to check the numbers; this variety might be even faster or something, but it seems like most of it isn't news...
Well, seeing as I've only been here about a week (new grad student) and I'm not technically in the "physics" area so much as the "health science" area (the offices of which are in the Civil Engineering building, of course), I can't really say as I have. Sorry.
...these scientists have never seen my g/f's response when she sees my paycheck in my hand.
"fastest self-powered predatory strike in the animal kingdom" my ass.
-Styopa
"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.
Imagine if these ants evolved wings like some of their cousins. Then they could glide after trap-jaw jumping increasing their range by 2 or 3 times.
According to TFA, they calculated the speed by using a high speed camera, and calculated that the ant closed its jaws on the bait in 130 microseconds. The record for opening a jaw though, at 110 microseconds after seeing the "bait," is still held by Paris Hilton.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
Well, what's special about that - there's plenty of people who propel themselves to higher places, and even manage to stay there for years, using nothing else than their jaws...
I saw something on the discovery channel once about snapping shrimp. There was also a blurb about a species of crab that uses a similar technique to stun prey. These animals can snap their claws at such a speed that it causes a phenomenon known as cavitation. The claw snaps so fast that it creates a sort of bubble from the pressure drop. When the bubble colapses from the sudden increase in pressure it does so very strongly and can damage or even kill an enemy. I wonder if the speed of the shrimp's claw snap is comparable to that of the ant. Unfortunately I can't find any numbers indicating the speed of the shrimp/crab claw snap. Pretty interesting article. =)
only thing faster: Chuck Norris's fists.
Only if they can then open their mouth as fast.
Then you could have a killa-bites-per-second.
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
Jaws have cause James Bond to jump around a lot too. Nothing new to see here, folks.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Think Halo with ants.... It makes just a as much sense except with awesome death killer jaw action. Have the voice of the hive/queen in your head as you do ant infiltration missions. In later levels sell out the concept by going having a death to humans/ant goes independent theme kick in. Call the genre first person biter.
However, in this case, the ant's entire jaw (entire limb) moved. But you seem to think that if it were to move farther (I suppose by cutting it off of the ant's head, in a vacuum on the space station (free fall and no air resistance), a bare instant before it would normally impact the opposing jaw) that it would slow down? I think that this is not the case. If it were, then Newton's first law would be wrong, and due neither to quantum mechanics nor to relativity. Now, granted, they most likely measured the speed at the tip of the jaw, where the range of motion is the greatest, so the entire jaw did not move with the same speed, but neither does a pitcher's arm as he throws a 90mph fastball. Near his shoulder, his arm moves quite slowly. This is normal lever action.
I do not think that this measurement is at all qualitatively different from a measurement of the speed of the 90mph fastball pitcher's hand. Well, it is in one sense, but one which makes it more, rather than less, remarkable. This measurement was an average over the full course of movement, rather than a measurement of the maximum speed attained (as in the case of the pitcher). The maximum is at least as great as the average, nearly always greater.
It is nearly impossible to tell, as everything is so jumbled up. You seem to be saying that a small portion of a limb will accelerate enormously and then slow down as the energy of motion is transferred to the rest of the limb. I'm not so convinced that this is the case, as bones and exoskeletons are quite rigid, but for the sake of argument, I'll concede that. However, I don't see what this has to do with anything. The ant's entire jaw moved, so there is no "more limb" left to slow it down. But then, you also seem to be saying that a smaller mass requires less force to accelerate. This is quite, true, but once again I don't see that it makes any difference. The record is not a force record, nor an energy release record, but a speed record. The ant's (entire) jaw moved with a speed greater than any previously known self-powered biological motion in an animal. Perhaps if you did measure the motion of a tiny portion of a human arm in the first .13 ms of motion, it would match this record, but it would be a qualitatively different measurement. The measurement of the ant's jaw measured an entire limb moving through its entire range of movement. It was fast. Neither the force nor the energy involved was record setting, but who cares? Nobody claimed they were. The speed was.
In the nuclear planets game, no this would not be significant. However, the nuclear planets game, as you have described it, seems to be about energy released (the fastest bowling ball speed attained in this manner, where bowling balls are all the same mass), but that is not at all what the measurement was about.
The ant's jaw is most like the guy who propels a small asteroid at high speed in the nuclear planets game. He does attain a speed record, even though he doesn't release as much energy as the guy who moves our moon at half that speed. So no, he isn't some new superplayer in the nuclear planets game, but that is because the nuclear planets game doesn't seem to be about speed records as you've described it, but about energy release records. However, since the entire jaw of the ant mov
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.