It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...an ant?

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Thagomizer

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G89IcZ3PluE


(Skip to :30 or 1:24, and have your speakers on for full effect)


So this ant can close it's jaws at 140mph, fast enough to send it sailing through the air if it bites at the ground. Somebody put a Youtube up of it. For some reason, I find this to be incredibly hilarious (as well as great .gif potential), so I thought I'd share.
 
I still don't get it. How does shutting its jaws make it jump high? how is it being lifted?

in any case this is just more proof that if ants ever got to be the size of cars we'd be completely fucked.
 
lightless_shado said:
I still don't get it. How does shutting its jaws make it jump high? how is it being lifted?

in any case this is just more proof that if ants ever got to be the size of cars we'd be completely fucked.
Click to expand...

I think if ants were ever the size of cats or dogs we'd be fucked as well
 
lightless_shado said:
I still don't get it. How does shutting its jaws make it jump high? how is it being lifted?

in any case this is just more proof that if ants ever got to be the size of cars we'd be completely fucked.
Click to expand...
I think it's like the kickback on a big gun.
Found a link to a Berkeley page about it.
 
I wish they'd had more than one go at a time, that would have been hilarious.

lightless_shado said:
I still don't get it. How does shutting its jaws make it jump high? how is it being lifted?
Click to expand...
The speed at which they close their jaws is so fast, and creates so much force, that if they bite at the ground it literally launches them into the air.
 
lightless_shado said:
I still don't get it. How does shutting its jaws make it jump high? how is it being lifted?

in any case this is just more proof that if ants ever got to be the size of cars we'd be completely fucked.
Click to expand...

Wiki oh great and wise what can you divine for us!?

One study of Odontomachus bauri recorded peak speeds of between 126–230 kilometres per hour (78–140 mph), with the jaws closing within just 130 microseconds on average. The peak force exerted was in the order of 300 times the body weight of the ant. The ants were also observed to use their jaws as a catapult to eject intruders or fling themselves backwards to escape a threat.

IT ANSWERS!
 
lightless_shado said:
I still don't get it. How does shutting its jaws make it jump high? how is it being lifted?

in any case this is just more proof that if ants ever got to be the size of cars we'd be completely fucked.
Click to expand...


Interestingly, it can't even break your skin- if it bites you, it just bounces off.
 
And eventually those ants will come back to the ground after launching and CONTINUE TO DOMINATE US WITH THEIR NEWLY-REALIZED SUPERPOWERS

hail-ants.PNG
 
I was listening to the Full House theme (on repeat) with this video on silent, and somehow at the 40 second mark everything clicked and became the funniest thing ever.
 
lightless_shado said:
in any case this is just more proof that if ants ever got to be the size of cars we'd be completely fucked.
Click to expand...
Body sizes don't scale that way. Every time you double something's size, you also quadruple its volume (and thus its weight). By the time an ant hits car size, its exoskeleton is so heavy it can't move* and its abdomen lining so thick, it can't breathe^.

*
Air at the scale of the ant is more like water on our scale. It's thicker and moving through it gives you some bouyancy. It's the reason they tell you Bumblebees can't fly based on aerodynamic principles - they can't.

Aerodynamics, however, makes assumptions like the air viscosity being more or less negligible. At the scale of a Bumblebee, though, the viscosity of air plays enough of a role that their wings are more like the blades of an outboard motor than the wings of a Cessna.

^
Ants absorb oxygen from the air via osmosis from their abdomens so they don't need lungs. At ant scale, their oxygen requirements are so low, they don't need a great deal of surface area to absorb enough oxygen. At our scale, on the other hand, you need a LOT. The human lungs, on the other hand, have enough surface area curled up inside the alvioli to cover two tennis courts.
 
There's some sort of Shrimp or Lobster that does the same thing. It snaps it's claw so fast it literally creates a shockwave that stuns it's dinner.

fuck I gotta find it now.
 
viciouskillersquirrel said:
Body sizes don't scale that way. Every time you double something's size, you also quadruple its volume (and thus its weight). By the time an ant hits car size, its exoskeleton is so heavy it can't move* and its abdomen lining so thick, it can't breathe^.

*
Air at the scale of the ant is more like water on our scale. It's thicker and moving through it gives you some bouyancy. It's the reason they tell you Bumblebees can't fly based on aerodynamic principles - they can't.

Aerodynamics, however, makes assumptions like the air viscosity being more or less negligible. At the scale of a Bumblebee, though, the viscosity of air plays enough of a role that their wings are more like the blades of an outboard motor than the wings of a Cessna.

^
Ants absorb oxygen from the air via osmosis from their abdomens so they don't need lungs. At ant scale, their oxygen requirements are so low, they don't need a great deal of surface area to absorb enough oxygen. At our scale, on the other hand, you need a LOT. The human lungs, on the other hand, have enough surface area curled up inside the alvioli to cover two tennis courts.
Click to expand...

This is why arthropods have at times grown to massive sizes in Earth's ancient past: much higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere is conducive to massive insect and crustacean growth.
 
viciouskillersquirrel said:
Body sizes don't scale that way. Every time you double something's size, you also quadruple its volume (and thus its weight). By the time an ant hits car size, its exoskeleton is so heavy it can't move* and its abdomen lining so thick, it can't breathe^.
Click to expand...

Octuple.

We got 3 spatial dimensions, yo.
 
I seriously don't have anything to say about this. It's just... what? The God of Evolution fucking around again, I guess.
 
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