Researchers from Columbia University discovered that Saharan silver ants utilize different unique adaptations to survive the scorching heat of the sun while looking for food in the middle of dessert.
Saharan silver ants metallic look made Nanfang Yu from Columbia University curious about its survival skill, describing it as a droplet of mercury when moving in the desert sand. Their lifestyle is described as thermophilic scavenging in the study published in the journal Science Magazine.
The ants rummage the corpses of other insects and arthropods quickly, otherwise, they will die if their body temperature climbs above 53.6 degree Celsius. For 10 minutes, they will leave their nest and look for food when the predator ant lizard is resting to a shaded area.
The metallic bugs are using their shimmering, triangular, size of the sun’s warming rays and silver hairs to reduce their body temperature. It also serves as reflector of visible and near-infrared light. At the mid-infrared wavelengths, these hairs let the excess heat to emit again through the process called "black body radiation, shielding them from the heat of the sun.
In addition, the extra-long legs of the ants help them to protect their bodies the hot sand and the heat shock proteins let them survive temperatures up to 128 degrees Fahrenheit.
To confirm their hypothesis, researchers have shaved some ant specimen and exposed both shaved and hairy ants to a hot xenon lamp and a cold plate that simulated sun and sky. The team had a difficulty in shaving the hair of the ants and took them a lot of time to finish it.
Saharan silver ants’ unique adaptations can be like cutting-edge, heat-resistant metasurfaces. Researchers said that the new research may help in creating new approaches to build these materials, CS Monitor reported.