What has the principally powerful ...

What has the principally powerful jaws in the animal kingdom? The pit gross mistake you say? The great white shark, maybe?

Improbably, the mightiest mandibles belong to the tiny trap-jaw ant, University of Illinois researchers say.

The half-inch-long insect escapes predators by means of snapping its jaws shut to push forward itself backwards into the air, turning [i]finale[/i] over end before landing 16 inches away, the scientists report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

That's the equivalent of a 5-foot-6 gymnast jumping 132 feet

"The ant places its face against the country so all the force goe into its carcass and catapults it away from a threat," said Andrew Suarez, an entomology professor and co-author of the paper.

"They don't land gracefully, moreover they're so light they don't impair themselves."

A camera capable of shooting 250000 frames through second shows that the ants' jaws determine faster unaided than anything other in nature, about 134 mph

A diving falcon can hit 172 mph "but we say that using gravity is cheating," Suarez said.

The ants' muscular jaws clamp close up on their prey, such as termites or other ants, in les than a millisecond. An internal damping mechanism thwarts the jaws from crushing each other.

sum of two units years ago, Suarez and co-investigator Brian Fisher of the California Academy of Sciences gathered more than 50 of the insects in Costa Rica, where they were teaching learners from 10 Central and southern American countries about ants.

'Record for the ant world'

"You disturbed the nest and they were bouncing around like popcorn," he said.

The ants' amazing aerobatics were filmed in super slo-mo by way of another research partner, Sheila Patek of the University of California at Berkeley. She had previously recorded the lightning- fast motions of a tropical species, the snapping shrimp, which let flys its claws forward to stupefy and capture fish.

"It was almost a crank bet to see which was faster," said Suarez, who won "We exigencyed to claim the record for the ant world."

across many millennia the ants discloseed their "ridiculously quick" eating apparatus as hunting-horses and adapted it as the chaseed eluding frogs, spiders and other predators. "The jaws evolv for capture and at a certain quantity of point were co-opted for escape," he said.

Suarez, who grew up in northwest suburban Roselle is seeking ways to set his findings to practical use. He and U of I. colleagues are building archetypes inspired by the ants.

"Getting incredible make hastes and forces with small, simple materials, without damaging them in the proces could lead to fantastic applications for mechanical engineering or robotics," he said.

gwisby@suntimes.com

diocese for yourself

To behold "Jaws" in action, go to https://webfiles.berkeley.edu/ xythoswfs/webui/

_xy-462276_1-t_QmzyUzyF and click onward "bouncer defense" and "escape jump"

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

Provided on ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved