Watch Wholphin online: Episode 8 Ballistic Jaw Propulsion of Trap-Jaw Ants

While the Society To Save Pluto as a Planet was battling the International Astronomical Union over the semantics of roundness, there was another scientific throw-down brewing in Berkeley, one that could only be solved with a $60,000 video camera shooting 100,000 frames per second. The contenders were the Myrmecologists versus the Stomatophore Researchers, and when it was over, there was a new world record for the fastest predatory strike in the animal kingdom and a film that, if we meditated, we’d meditate to. The results: the fastest predatory strike in the animal kingdom is no longer the brutal claw punch of the peacock mantis shrimp (Odontodactylus scyllarus). The peacock mantis can punch its raptorial appendage at over sixty miles an hour, producing a force one thousand times greater than its body mass, capable of shattering snail shells, pâté-ing small fish, and creating a cavitation wave known to crack aquarium glass three feet away. But the mandibles of Odontomachus bauri, a.k.a. the trap-jaw ant, are faster. The trap-jaw ant has a pair of jagged scythes growing from its head that, when triggered by tiny hairs, can smash down at 145 cricket-decapitating miles an hour. The motion pushes the boundaries of physics, and often causes the ants to do a thing not unlike flying.* WHO’S WHO Brian Fisher, the man at the ant frontier, brought with him the little box of ants. Andy Suarez, trap-jaw visionary, made the journey from east-central Illinois. Joe Baio, the chemist turned biologist turned ant-filmmaker did the hardest work for the least salary. Sheila Patek, fast animal movement guru, made sure the team worked hard in her lab and collected enough data to publish something. In Patek’s high tech UC Berkeley laboratory, Dr. Fisher wielded the pooter (yes, the term for the state-of-the-art ant retriever suction device used by ant biologists in the know), Prof. Suarez flourished jump-inducing ant tools, Mr. Baio set up the shots, and Prof. Patek reviewed the footage. All participants danced with the ants when they saw the jumps for the first time. —Sheila Patek

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