Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Trap-Jaw Ants

It is the speeding bullet of the natural world. The trap-jaw ant snaps shut its mandibles at speeds of 35 to 64 meters per second, about 2300 times faster than the blink of an eye.
This has to be one of the oddest (and strangely mesmerizing) things on the net: ants flying through the air in extreme slow motion propelled by the rapid closing of their jaws. All set to a very peculiar sound track. The ant at the top of the image above is cart-wheeling its way over the other two.
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