Trap-jaw ants can slam their jaws together with extraordinary speed, with the tips of their mandibles racing at up to roughly 120 miles per hour. How they could perform such attacks, repeatedly, ...

The speedy mandibles of Strumigenys ants developed repeatedly throughout the world, explaining how evolution creates new abilities to help a species survive. Ants gather on a dewy peony bud. (Image ...

Ants are among the strangest creatures on the planet, but one group of ants is stranger than most. The aptly-named 'trap-jaw ants' have gigantic mandibles that they can snap shut on their unsuspecting ...

video: The animation shows the changes in form as the trap-jaw mechanism becomes more divergent from the ancestral form. The jaws (yellow) develop small projections that can latch onto the labrum ...

Few potential victims stand a chance against the formidable mandibles of a trap-jaw ant. In conflicts between predators and prey, speed is a decided advantage, and evolution has given these insects an ...

The trap-jaw ants are famous for having one of the natural world's fastest movements, but how did the latch-spring mechanism that drives their jaws evolve? According to a study published on March 2nd, ...

A member of the Myrmoteras genus of trap-jaw ants, with mandibles deployed. Steve Shattuck Imagine you’re crawling along the forest floor, idly searching for a bit of fungus to chow down on, when out ...

An aggressive type of trap-jaw ant with a mighty bite is gaining ground in the U.S. southeast, new research finds. The species, Odontomachus haematodus, is native to South America, but it seems to ...

Dec. 12 (UPI) --The record for fastest appendage belongs to the dracula ant, Mystrium camilla, and its snap-jaw. Scientists clocked the speed of its mandibles at 200 miles per hours. The dracula ant's ...