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FRANCE: The trap-jaw ant has earned the reputation of making short work of its prey. With herculean, spring-loaded mandibles, it crushes its prey with ease and defends its nests.
Scientists have recently discovered it has another nifty use for those jaws.
In a study published in PLOS ONE, entomologists Fredrick Larabee and Andrew Suarez provided evidence that trap-jaw ants can also use their high-velocity mandibles for “ballistic jaw propulsion.” In other words, they can open their jaws to 180 degrees before snapping them shut at 140 miles per hour, arstechnica reports.
“They produce so much force that when they strike [a part of the ground] that’s relatively immovable, that force gets projected back on the ant and they go flying through the air,” Suarez told National Geographic, which helped fund the study.
At first, the scientists didn’t know if the insects were doing this to intentionally fling themselves to safety, or if it was a lucky misfire when fighting a predator. Now, after studying the critters, it seems that trap-jaw ants really do resort to acrobatics as a way of hurling themselves to safety, and that comes in handy when they have to deal with their fiercest predator, the antlion.
