New Record For Fastest Moving Appendage: According to F.J. Larabee, A.A. Smith and A.V. Suarez (12 Dec. 2018), writing in Royal Society Open Science, the jaws of dracula ant (Mystrium camillae) are the fastest moving appendage in the animal kingdom. Dracula ants get their common name from sucking blood of their larvae. Their record-breaking snaps are 5,000 times faster than the blink of an eye, and three times faster than the jaw-snapping speed of the trap-jaw ant, previously the fastest insect appendage known to scientists.

It takes only 0.000015 seconds for the mandibles of the Dracula ant to accelerate to their maximum speed. The ants produce their record-breaking snaps simply by pressing their jaws together so hard that they bend. This stores energy in one of the jaws, like a spring, until it slides past the other and lashes out with extraordinary speed and force—reaching a maximum velocity of over 200 miles per hour. Unlike trap-jaw ants, whose powerful jaws snap closed from an open position, Dracula ants power up their mandibles by pressing the tips together, spring-loading them with internal stresses that release when one mandible slides across the other, similar to a human finger snap. The ants use this motion to stun other arthropod prey. The prey is then transported back to the nest, where it is fed to the ants’ larvae. Photo courtesy of http://www.antweb.org