Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
Although the silver ants that call the Sahara desert home typically leave their underground nests for no more than 20 minutes per day, surface temperatures reach upwards of a blistering 150 degrees Fahrenheit. How do they handle such scorching conditions?
As a new study published Thursday in the journal Science explained, Cataglyphis bombycina, also known as the Sarahan silver ants, survive thanks to an unusual coating of highly-reflective triangularly-shaped hairs that covers their bodies and helps keep them cool, according to a New York Times report.
This coating, study’s authors explain, gives the ants their silvery appearance while also providing them with thermoregulatory benefits. The coating enhances the reflectivity of the ants’ body surface in both visible and near-infrared light, and it allows them to dissipate heat back into their surroundings through blackbody radiation in full daylight conditions.
Coating could inspire new heat-resistant materials
Nanfang Yu, a physicist at Columbia University and one of the study’s authors, told the paper that the hairs were critical to ant’s survival, explaining that the creatures go out during the hottest part of the day because that is when they can find the most dead insects.
He also told New Scientist that it was the unique, metallic appearance of the silver ant that first caught his attention, noting that they reminded him of “a droplet of mercury” as they traveled across the desert sands. However, Yu added that the research revealed that their adaptation may help to inspire the development of new heat-resistant surfaces or materials.
While several different types of creatures have developed ways to interact with light, the silver ant is somewhat unusual in the fact that it has adapted protective coatings effective in more than one wavelength of light, Aaswath Raman from Stanford University told the website.
“The combination of doing something in the visible and the mid-infrared is very unusual,” said Raman, who develops materials that reflect sunlight and re-emit heat similar to silver ants. “It’s kind of remarkable and pretty cool – no pun intended – that there’s an analogue in nature to the way we’re thinking about these problems.”
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