2019-10-17 02:31:43
According to Noël Coward, mad dogs and Englishmen are the only creatures that go out in the midday sun, but Harald Wolf from the University of Ulm, Germany, would add another animal: Saharan silver ants (Cataglyphis bombycina). Venturing from their nests to scavenge the corpses of less-fortunate creatures at the peak of the day—when the sand can reach 60°C—these resilient ants had always fascinated Wolf. 'Even among desert ants, the silver ants are special', he says, explaining that the insects were reputed to hit speeds approaching 1 m/s. But little was known about how the ants scamper at such blistering speeds across the sand. During an earlier trip to the salt pans of Tunisia—to study the silver ant's cousin, Cataglyphis fortis—Wolf, Sarah Pfeffer, Verena Wahl and Matthias Wittlinger had taken a detour to Douz to search for the enigmatic desert dwellers. After finding silver ants thriving in the dunes, the team returned in 2015 to film them in action. The team publishes their discover that Saharan silver ants are the fastest ants ever recorded, reaching speeds of 0.855m/s (855mm/s) by swinging their legs at speeds of up to 1300mm/s in Journal of Experimental Biology.
