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....