World's fastest ant can run the equivalent of an astonishing 360mph

Taking an astonishing 47 strides a second, the Saharan silver has been crowned the world’s fastest ant.  It can sprint at nearly a yard per second – almost 2mph.  This might not sound super quick until you take into account that the tiny creature is covering 108 times its body length each second, which is the equivalent of a human running at 360mph.  Scientists found exactly how fast the ant runs by filming it in more detail than ever.  It showed them galloping with all six feet off the ground at the same time – quite useful as it runs along while the sand in the Sahara in Africa can be 60C.  Professor Harald Wolf, of Ulm University in Germany, who led the study, said: “Even among desert ants, silver ants are special.”  Less impressively quick but still fairly pacey is the fire ants.  The species can travel at a rate of nine body lengths per second.   Scaled up to human size, this is roughly equal to running 30 miles per hour.  A type of mite is the fastest size-for-size runner at 320 body lengths per second, over 1,000mph in human terms.

Insects,