Sahara desert ant

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iSahara Desert ant

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Hymenoptera
Suborder:	Apocrita
Superfamily:	Vespoidea
Family:	Formicidae
Genus:	Cataglyphis

The Sahara desert ant (Cataglyphis bicolor) is a desert dwelling ant of the genus Cataglyphis. It inhabits the Sahara desert and is one of the most heat tolerant higher organisms known to date.

Sahara desert ants are scavengers. They forage for the corpses of insects and other arthropods which have succumbed to the heat stress of their desert environment.

While no known animal can live permanently at a temperature over 50°C, Sahara desert ants can sustain a body temperature well above 50°C with surface temperatures of up to 70°C.

This ant ventures far from its burrow in the Sahara desert which has almost no identifiable features to find food. While venturing out it periodically takes measurments of its angle in respect to the sun. by doing this the ant can venture far from its nest in the blistering heat in search of food, which it can only do for about 3~5 minutes/day(the hottest point, when all the predators are in hiding from the sun). When the ant finds a dead insect it then looks at the sun and because of its periodic references to the suns angle it knows exactly the shortest route directly back to the nest.

This skill that has also been observed in the behavior of foraging honey bees is elemental to the survival of this species of ant under the harsh conditions in which it lives. This behavior allows cataglyphis to travel farther from its nest than any other creature compared to size.