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While no known land animal can live permanently at a temperature over 50 °C, Sahara Desert ants can sustain a body temperature above 50 °C (122 °F), [2] with surface temperatures of up to 70 °C (158 °F). Despite this, if out in the open, they must keep moving or else they will fry.
Plerergates can live anywhere in the nest, but in the wild, they are found deep underground, unable to move, swollen to the size of grapes. [7] In Camponotus inflatus in Australia, repletes formed 49% (516 ants) of a colony of 1063 ants, and 46% (1835 ants) of a colony of 4019 ants. The smaller colony contained six wingless queens.
The ants often traverse midday temperatures around 47 °C (117 °F) to scavenge corpses of heat-stricken animals. [3] To cope with such high temperatures, the ants have several unique adaptations. When traveling at full speed, they use only four of their six legs. This quadrupedal gait is achieved by raising the front pair of legs. [4]
Cataglyphis [2] is a genus of ant, desert ants, in the subfamily Formicinae.Its most famous species is C. bicolor, the Sahara Desert ant, which runs on hot sand to find insects that died of heat exhaustion, and can, like other several other Cataglyphis species, sustain body temperatures up to 50°C. [3]
[5] [6] A queen can live up to 30 years, and many colonies survive for 20 years. [4] [7] [8] A colony inhabits a nest that is up to 5 metres (16 ft) deep. [9] The queen stays at the bottom of the nest, and workers usually relocate themselves and brood within the nest, capturing safe levels of heat.
You can imagine what happened next: He woke up his wife by screaming bloody murder. They got the heck out of there, waking up their friends—who were thankfully staying in the downstairs bedroom ...
This specialized fungus can no longer reproduce on its own and needs the ants to survive. The fungi produce gongylidia, which are like little nutrient-filled powerhouses for ants.
These ants are renowned for their ability to survive extreme conditions. They do not hibernate, but can survive cold conditions, although this is costly to fire ant populations as observed during several winters in Tennessee, where 80 to 90% of colonies died due to several consecutive days of extremely low temperatures. [9]