Saharan silver ant

Common card · No. 432308

The Saharan silver ant (Cataglyphis bombycina) is a species of insect that lives in the Sahara Desert. It is the fastest of the world's 12,000 known ant species, clocking a velocity of 855 millimetres per second (over 1.9 miles per hour or 3.1 kilometres per hour). It can travel a length 108 times its own body length per second, a feat topped only by two other creatures, the Australian tiger beetle Rivacindela hudsoni and the California coastal mite Paratarsotomus macropalpis. This is nearly the walking pace of a human being, and compared to its body size would correspond to a speed of about 200 m/s (720 km/h) for a 180 cm (6 ft) tall human runner. Largely due to the extremely high temperatures of their habitat, but also due to the threat of predators, the ants are active outside their nest for only about ten minutes per day. The twin pressures of predation and temperature restrict their above-ground activity to within a narrow temperature band between that at which predatory lizards cease...

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