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Fastest Ant Ever Discovered in Tunisian Desert

A Matabele ant is seen carrying an injured mate back to the nest after a raid in this July 26, 2013 handout photo. Photo: Reuters
A Matabele ant is seen carrying an injured mate back to the nest after a raid in this July 26, 2013 handout photo. Photo: Reuters
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Fastest Ant Ever Discovered in Tunisian Desert

A Matabele ant is seen carrying an injured mate back to the nest after a raid in this July 26, 2013 handout photo. Photo: Reuters
A Matabele ant is seen carrying an injured mate back to the nest after a raid in this July 26, 2013 handout photo. Photo: Reuters

According to Noël Coward, mad dogs and Englishmen are the only creatures that go out in the midday sun, but a research team from the University of Ulm, Germany, would add another animal: Saharan silver ants.

During an earlier trip to the salt pans of Tunisia (South of the Atlas Mountains on the northern edge of the desert) to study the Cataglyphis fortis, a type of Saharan ant, another type of silver ant caught the attention of the research team, with its outstanding speed and its adaptability to high temperature in the noon despite its short legs.

The team returned to Tunisia in 2015 to study the speed of the Saharan silver ant and published its findings four years later, on Wednesday, in the Journal of Experimental Biology, showing these insects are the fastest ants ever recorded, reaching speeds of 855mm/s (0.855m/s).

In a report published on the British Biologists Foundation's website, the study lead author, Sarah Pfeffer, said: "Our first uneasy mission was to locate the nests of these ants. However, once the team had located a nest, it was simply a matter of connecting an aluminum channel to the entrance and placing a feeder at the end to lure the ants out. After the ants have found the food, they shuttle back and forth in the channel and we mounted our camera to film them from the top."

Calculating the insects' top speeds, Pfeffer and her colleagues were impressed to find the animals hit an extraordinary 855mm/s during the hottest part of the desert day, making them the world's fastest ant and placing them close to the top of the list of world record-breaking creatures, alongside Australian tiger beetles (9 kilometers per hour).

The insect's speed wasn't the only surprising fact, but also its capacity to maintain this speed despite living in a very hot environment, and the shortness of its legs compared to other types of ants studied in the same region including the Cataglyphis fortis.

"We found that this ant used a different strategy to reach high speeds, outweighing the long-legged Cataglyphis Fortis. Apparently, the silver ant's shorter leg length was compensated with high step frequencies, exceeding 40 Hz," said Pfeffer.

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Water Levels Plummet at Drought-Hit Iraqi Reservoir

Kochar Jamal Tawfeeq, director of the Dukan Dam facility, gives an interview by the reservoir northwest of Iraq's northeastern city of Sulaimaniyah in the autonomous Kurdistan region on June 4, 2025, where waters have been receding due to a mix of factors including lower rainfall, severe drought, and diversion of inflowing rivers from Iran. (AFP)
Kochar Jamal Tawfeeq, director of the Dukan Dam facility, gives an interview by the reservoir northwest of Iraq's northeastern city of Sulaimaniyah in the autonomous Kurdistan region on June 4, 2025, where waters have been receding due to a mix of factors including lower rainfall, severe drought, and diversion of inflowing rivers from Iran. (AFP)
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Water Levels Plummet at Drought-Hit Iraqi Reservoir

Kochar Jamal Tawfeeq, director of the Dukan Dam facility, gives an interview by the reservoir northwest of Iraq's northeastern city of Sulaimaniyah in the autonomous Kurdistan region on June 4, 2025, where waters have been receding due to a mix of factors including lower rainfall, severe drought, and diversion of inflowing rivers from Iran. (AFP)
Kochar Jamal Tawfeeq, director of the Dukan Dam facility, gives an interview by the reservoir northwest of Iraq's northeastern city of Sulaimaniyah in the autonomous Kurdistan region on June 4, 2025, where waters have been receding due to a mix of factors including lower rainfall, severe drought, and diversion of inflowing rivers from Iran. (AFP)

Water levels at Iraq's vast Dukan Dam reservoir have plummeted as a result of dwindling rains and further damming upstream, hitting millions of inhabitants already impacted by drought with stricter water rationing.

Amid these conditions, visible cracks have emerged in the retreating shoreline of the artificial lake, which lies in northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region and was created in the 1950s.

Dukan Lake has been left three quarters empty, with its director Kochar Jamal Tawfeeq explaining its reserves currently stand at around 1.6 billion cubic meters of water out of a possible seven billion.

That is "about 24 percent" of its capacity, the official said, adding that the level of water in the lake had not been so low in roughly 20 years.

Satellite imagery analyzed by AFP shows the lake's surface area shrank by 56 percent between the end of May 2019, the last year it was completely full, and the beginning of June 2025.

Tawfeeq blamed climate change and a "shortage of rainfall" explaining that the timing of the rains had also become irregular.

Over the winter season, Tawfeeq said the Dukan region received 220 millimeters (8.7 inches) of rain, compared to a typical 600 millimeters.

- 'Harvest failed' -

Upstream damming of the Little Zab River, which flows through Iran and feeds Dukan, was a secondary cause of the falling water levels, Tawfeeq explained.

Also buffeted by drought, Iran has built dozens of structures on the river to increase its own water reserves.

Baghdad has criticized these kinds of dams, built both by Iran and neighboring Türkiye, accusing them of significantly restricting water flow into Iraq via the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Iraq, and its 46 million inhabitants, have been intensely impacted by the effects of climate change, experiencing rising temperatures, year-on-year droughts and rampant desertification.

At the end of May, the country's total water reserves were at their lowest level in 80 years.

On the slopes above Dukan lies the village of Sarsian, where Hussein Khader Sheikhah, 57, was planting a summer crop on a hectare of land.

The farmer said he hoped a short-term summer crop of the kind typically planted in the area for an autumn harvest -- cucumbers, melons, chickpeas, sunflower seeds and beans -- would help him offset some of the losses over the winter caused by drought.

In winter, in another area near the village, he planted 13 hectares mainly of wheat.

"The harvest failed because of the lack of rain," he explained, adding that he lost an equivalent of almost $5,700 to the poor yield.

"I can't make up for the loss of 13 hectares with just one hectare near the river," he added.

- 'Stricter rationing' -

The water shortage at Dukan has affected around four million people downstream in the neighboring Sulaimaniyah and Kirkuk governorates, including their access to drinking water.

For more than a month, water treatment plants in Kirkuk have been trying to mitigate a sudden, 40 percent drop in the supplies reaching them, according to local water resource official Zaki Karim.

In a country ravaged by decades of conflict, with crumbling infrastructure and floundering public policies, residents already receive water intermittently.

The latest shortages are forcing even "stricter rationing" and more infrequent water distributions, Karim said.

In addition to going door-to-door to raise awareness about water waste, the authorities were also cracking down on illegal access to the water network.

In the province of roughly two million inhabitants, the aim is to minimize the impact on the provincial capital of Kirkuk.

"If some treatment plants experience supply difficulties, we will ensure that there are no total interruptions, so everyone can receive their share," Karim said.