Scientists detailed the way trap-jaw ants escape from the jaws of larger, more powerful predators by hurling themselves backward using their own mandibles.
According to Discovery News, the scientists detailed their discovery in a study published in the journal PLOS One. The researchers knew of this ability from past studies, but wanted to determine its success rate and more specific usages.
For their study, the researchers put trap-jaw ants into antlion-built sand pits, where the predator often catches and kills its prey.
"If an ant falls into the pit, it tries to run away, but the sand crumbles beneath its feet," study lead author Fredrick Larabee, a graduate student at the University of Illinois, said in a press release. "This pulls it closer to the center of the pit where the antlion is waiting.
"The ants were able to jump out of the pits about 15 percent of the time in their encounters with antlions," he said. "But when we glued their mandibles shut before dropping them in the pits, they couldn't jump at all. It cut their survival rate in half."
These trap-jaw ants, scientifically named Odontomachus brunneus, also use their powerful jaws for everyday tasks like digging and caring for offspring or larvae. The researchers also noticed different stances the ants would take depending on what function their spring-loaded mandibles were performing.
"Based on our earlier studies, if the ant was striking a prey object, the distance between the ant and the prey was about the length of the trigger hairs that come off the mandibles," study co-author Andrew Suarez, an entomology professor and animal biology department head at Illinois, said in the release. "But when they were jumping off a surface, you would often see the ants put their entire face against the surface, and it was more of a pushing behavior than a striking behavior."
