World’s fastest ant clocks nearly a metre per second

PARIS, France: It’s official: The Saharan silver ant is the fastest of the world’s 12,000 known ant species, clocking a blistering 855 millimetres — nearly a metre — per second, researchers said Thursday. Measured another way, the six-legged sprinter covers 108 times its own body length per second, a feat topped only by two other creatures, the Australian tiger beetle and the California coastal mite. To run 100 times his body length as quickly, the fastest man in the world, Usain Bolt, would need to sprint the 200-metre dash in less than a second. Making the exploit even more remarkable, the Saharan silver hits top speed racing at midday across desert sands that reach 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit), the researchers reported in the Journal of Experimental Biology.