Western media: The fastest climbing ants live in the Sahara and can move nearly 1 meter per second

Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, October 21, New Media Special Telegram Western Media said that in the sand dunes of the Sahara Desert lives in the eyes of scientists what scientists believe to be the fastest ants in the world.

According to the website of the Spanish newspaper Pioneer on October 20, a team of researchers measured the speed of movement of these ants, and the results were surprising. Some of the footage the researchers analyzed showed that the ants could move nearly 1 meter per second.

The faster these ants climb, the more they soar upwards and can lift six legs at the same time. At peak speed, the ants can move up to 85.6 centimeters per second, equivalent to 108 of their own length. Sarah Pfeffer, lead author of the study paper and an expert on animal behavior at the University of Ulm in Germany, said: "They are almost 'flying' against the ground, and their feet are barely touching the ground. ”

They are the famous "Sahara Silver Ants", which live in the hottest deserts in the world, and noon is the best time for them to dig. As the desert gets hotter and hotter, they emerge from their nests to feed, usually from animal carcasses that die from the heat. In order to survive in such an environment, sahara silver ants have a silver filament on their back that acts as an "umbrella", which reflects light and heat, thus protecting them from sunlight. However, despite this unique defense mechanism, they still have difficulty withstanding the heat for a long time, so they have to speed up the pace to find food and then return to the nest.

After managing to locate the nest of this extremely vigorous insect, the researchers installed an aluminum channel along the ground that was connected all the way to the entrance to its nest, and placed some flour worms or breadcrumbs at the other end of the channel to lure the ants out of the hole. Slow-motion footage shows that the ants coordinate their six legs very precisely. The researchers also found that the sahara silver ant's movement speed decreased as the ambient temperature decreased.

Researchers have previously obtained images of the "long-legged desert ant" living on a salt flat in Tunisia, which can move as fast as 62 centimeters per second, once the holder of the desert ant speed record, and the new study has put the Sahara silver ant in its place. The new findings are published in the latest bimonthly issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology.