254 observations
Saharan Silver Ant
Cataglyphis bombycina
Taxonomy
Kingdom: Animalia ›Phylum: Arthropoda ›Class: Insecta ›Order: Hymenoptera ›Family: Formicidae ›Genus: Cataglyphis
About
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 blistering velocity of 855 millimetres per second (nearly 1 m/s or 3.6 km/h). 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 Cicindela eburneola and the California coastal mite Paratarsotomus macropalpis....