How these ants bite at jaw-dropping speed, 700 times faster than you can blink

The ant stalks the forest floor, its antennas alert and its mouth agape. Its sideways jaws are edged with menacing teeth and held so far open they extend back behind the its head. There’s a twitch in the leaf litter – a tasty bug called a springtail emerges. In an instant, one seven-hundredth of the time it takes to blink an eye, the ant snaps its jaws shut around the unsuspecting creature. Dinner is served.

The mechanics of this formidable hunting strategy have long eluded scientists. These predatory ants, from the genus Myrmoteras, live in small colonies deep in the forests of southeast Asia and are almost impossible to discern amid the detritus that carpets the earth.

But thanks to a lucky discovery and some high-speed cameras, evolutionary biologist Fred Larabee was finally able to watch this type of trap-jaw ant in action. His study, published Wednesday in the Journal of Experimental Biology, is the first to explain the spring-loaded mechanism that makes these ants’ jaws snap.

“They’re just fascinating to me,” said Larabee, whose Twitter handle is @bugbiter and whose bio proclaims his interest in “insect mouthparts”.

Larabee, now a postdoctoral fellow at the National Museum of Natural History and George Washington University,

a specialist in ant species with fast-acting “trap jaws” – of which there are many. This ability has evolved at least four separate times in unrelated groups of ants.

“It’s a really good example of convergent evolution,” Larabee said, “where different body parts are being used to do the same function in these different groups.”