Cheetah Just Lost Its Fastest Animal Title To Dracula Ant & It's Exactly As Scary As It Sounds

Cheetah is the fastest animal on earth, right?

Not anymore - we now have a new fastest runner in the house, and its called the Dracula ant. The ant snaps its mandibles at a speed of up to 90 metres a second and that's the fastest animal movement on record.

The name of the animal derives from its unusual feeding habits. As the adult ants are not able to process solid food, they feed prey to their larvae and then chew holes in their larvae and drink their blood. Now you know why they are called Dracula ants.

According to The Guardian, Andrew Suarez, an animal biology professor at the University of Illinois, who headed the research, said, “They’re cruising around underground and if they encounter something like a centipede or a termite they can smack them with the mandibles to kill or stun them. They can then sting it to further incapacitate it and then they carry it back to the nest.”

They are usually found in tropical regions of Africa and Asia and the insects live in large colonies in the trunks. That is why they are very rarely noticed.

Source: indiatimes.com