Spring-loaded jaws of Trap-jaw ants have an amazing weapon i.e. their mouth, which is capable of snapping shut as fast as 60 meters/second (134 miles/hr) and can generate forces over 300 times their body weight.

These ants are ferocious predators of termites and other small insects. They can also catapult themselves into the air with a jaw snap.

Jaws that snap shut with extreme force can have both an offensive and defensive function, said researchers. The jaws can even toss an away during a fight; and when under attack, a colony of ants fling themselves around disorienting attackers.

Now a team of researchers in a new research looked at how the jaws can function against a predator of ants: antlions. Antlions are a type of insect that preys upon ants. They build lairs in the sand and wait for an ant or another insect to tumble in.

Antlion grabs its victim with large, frightening jaws, pulls it under the sand, and injects digestive fluids into the prey’s body cavity.

Researchers told that the deadly predators fling grains of sand at their victims to make their pit walls less stable, and hurry their slide to doom.

Researchers Fred Larabee and Andy Suarez wondered whether ants’ trap-jaw help them to defend against antlions. To know this they dropped a bunch of ants onto a bunch of antlions, and watched what happened.

Researchers at first harvested antlions and let them set up their pitfall traps in the lab. Then they added trap-jaw ants near the pits.

They found that almost half of the times ants were able to run away from the antlion and out of the pit and 36% of the ants were eaten up by antlions.

Whereas 15% of the ants used their jaws to catapult themselves out of the pit after encountering the antlion.