Saharan Silver Ants
Thermoregulation by Mechanism
Total Internal Reflection
Hot and Humid Climate
• Saharan Silver Ants are found in the hottest
region of Sahara Desert. The hair of these ants
reduce heat adsorption by efficiently
reflecting sunlight and dissipating heat. This
enables the ant to stay cool in the midday,
where the temperature can reach up to 47 C.
• The silver ant’s assets include a compound
heat shield made up of a covering of special
hairs on the top and sides of its body and a
hairless underside.
• The hairs grow parallel to the skin and are
separated by a small gap.
• The hairs, which give the ant a silvery sheen ,
are tiny tubes with a triangular cross section.
Their two outward-facing surfaces have
microscopic corrugations that run the length of
the hair, while the inward-facing surface is
smooth.
• This structure helps in ten fold increase in the
light reflectivity and thereby helping in keeping
cool. This design serves two functions. First, it
enables the hairs to reflect solar radiation in
the visible and near-infrared ranges. Second, it
helps the ant to dissipate body heat absorbed
from the environment. Meanwhile, the ant’s
hairless underside reflects radiation that is in
the mid-infrared range and emanates from the
desert floor.
• The optical and physical properties of the ant hair favor
total internal reflection. Each hair essentially acts like a
tiny mirror that reflects nearly all of the light that hits it.
• These properties include the hair’s triangular shape, the
grooves running along the upper two sides of the hair,
and the shape of the ant’s abdomen and lies in the same
orientation, with the flat side parallel to the ant’s body.
• The net result of all these acting together is to minimize
the surface area of the side of the hair facing the skin,
and to maximize the surface area of the sides facing the
sky. Energy will be radiated from the hair surfaces at
some rate per square unit of surface area(eg watts
/square meter). So the larger the proportion of the hairs’
surface area facing the sky, the greater the proportion of
energy radiated skywards versus back toward the ant.
• Under most conditions, when light enters the hair
through one of the grooved sides it is totally internally
reflected off of the flat side and then exits from the other
grooved side.
• In this way the hair keeps the light, and therefore heat,
away from the ant’s body. The grooves allow more light
to enter the hair, increasing the amount that can be
totally internally reflected.
Other cooling measures
• Longer legs, which keep their bodies further from the
hot sand.
• Heat shock proteins (Released before going out in the
desert so that body continues function in the high
temperature.)
• An internal navigation system based on the position of
the sun that helps the ants minimize time spent outside
the nest.
Sneha Ann Mathews
1RW16AT106