6 ms·
To travel 370 meters in 2.5 hours, an ant would have to travel 41 millimeters per second. That seems like a very fast ant.
by panarky 5y ago
To travel 370 meters in 2.5 hours, an ant would have to travel 41 millimeters per second. That seems like a very fast ant.
- bnegreve 5y ago41 mm/s is not fast, according to this website a black ant runs at 80mm/s: https://idswater.com/2019/12/13/how-fast-is-an-ant-in-mph/ https://idswater.com/2019/12/13/how-fast-is-an-ant-in-mph/
- mathattack 5y agoI had to convert. That equals an inch and a half. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen ants scurrying around that fast. May depend on which type of ants. Alternatively - could an ant run a meter in 25 seconds? Seems reasonable. A quick Google search shows some can go upwards of 800mm/sec but they’re outliers. https://www.sciencealert.com/world-s-fastest-ants-clock-855-millimetres-per-second https://www.sciencealert.com/world-s-fastest-ants-clock-855-... Btw - I appreciate that you took the time to check the numbers yourself. Very few people do the math on their own first.
- londons_explore 5y agoI just wonder who marked an individual ant in presumably rough forest terrain, and then watched it for 2.5 hours...
- alisonkisk 5y agoAll you need to do is warch one ant for a minute or few and extrapolate.
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago> An ant mill was first described in 1921 by William Beebe, who observed a mill 1200 ft (~370 m) in circumference. It took each ant 2.5 hours to make one revolution. William Beebe, apparently.
- tjbrennan 5y agoYou can click through the citation and read the excerpt. It's an amusing bit of writing about the joys of discovery.
- dtgriscom 5y agoMiniaturization: ant pedometers.