A minuscule tropical insect has beaten the cheetah as the fastest-moving animal in the world. Scientists say that Dracula ants now hold the title.
Fastest-Moving Animals
The creatures that are often found in Africa, Australia, and southeast Asia will never be able to outrun a cheetah whose record running speed is at 60 mph. However, Dracula ants can snap shut their jaws at 200 mph or 5,000 times faster than the blink of an eye.
"These ants are fascinating as their mandibles are very unusual," stated biology and entomology professor Andrew Suarez, who led the research. "Even among ants that power-amplify their jaws, the Dracula ants are unique: Instead of using three different parts for the spring, latch and lever arm, all three are combined in the mandible."
Scientists compared a Dracula ant's mandible to a mouse trap: the insect presses the tips of its mandible together, building pressure until it reaches its breaking point and snaps. From start to finish, the whole process only takes about 0.000015 seconds.
The movement of the ants' mandibles is so fast that scientists had to use incredibly fast cameras to observe them. For the study, scientists also used X-ray imaging technology to probe the insects' anatomy and figure out how their jaws move as fast as they do.
The creatures use their incredibly fast mandibles to attack potential prey by smacking them against the wall or to push them away.
"By comparing the jaw shape of snapping ants with biting ants, we also learned that it only took small changes in shape for the jaws to evolve a new function: acting as a spring," added Fredrick J. Larabee, a postdoctoral researcher and also an author of the study.
The study was published in the journal The Royal Society Publishing. Scientists hope to continue studying the ants' mandibles in action to describe how the insects capture their prey and defend their nests.
Dracula Ants
Dracula ants are known to live in large underground colonies or inside tree trunks. However, the insects got their name from their rather unusual feeding habits.
Adult Dracula ants cannot process solid food so they feed their prey to their larvae. Similar to its namesake, the ants "bite" the larvae to drink their blood — an arrangement in the animal kingdom called "social stomach."
