Sometimes the best solution to a sticky situation is a quick escape, and few escapes are faster than a trap-jaw ant’s. (Video produced by Spine Films)
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Originally published on bioGraphic: bit.ly/2Owg3by
Powerful jaws feature so prominently in science articles and documentaries that descriptors such as “bone-crunching” or “lightning-fast” hardly mean anything anymore. We’re all familiar by now with the animal kingdom’s impressive array of armaments, and jaws are some of the most widely-used tools for catching prey and defending oneself. Among the diverse cast of characters with menacing mouthparts, trap-jaw ants (Odontomachus sp.), although tiny, are awe-inspiring in their own right. With jaws that open a full 180 degrees and span a distance significantly wider than their heads, the ants can strike at the breathtaking speed of 225 kilometers (140 miles) per hour and with a force 300 times the insects’ own weight. In addition to the more conventional functions that jaws perform in other animals, trap-jaw ants employ theirs in a truly novel way: locomotion.
Whenever a quick escape is required, the insects press their heads into the ground, slam their jaws shut, and fling themselves a distance that’s equivalent to an average-sized person jumping 40 meters (130 feet) through the air. As biologist Sheila Patek describes it, “In regular, daily time, the ant is on the ground-and then you can’t find it.” Patek’s lab at Duke University specializes in studying some of the fastest motions in the animal kingdom, and trap-jaw ants are at the center of a ground-breaking partnership she forged with engineer Zeynep Temel from the Wood Microrobotics Lab at Harvard University. Temel, who uses origami-inspired metal folding techniques to create tiny robotic structures, is drawing on Patek’s deep knowledge of trap-jaw ant biology to develop new obstacle-jumping microrobots. Meanwhile, Patek has learned something from their partnership that she never expected-and it’s fundamentally changed biologists’ understanding of how the ants achieve their jaw-dropping acrobatics.
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