...Lars Reinhardt; Reinhard Blickhan In order to better understand the strategies of locomotion in small insects, we have studied continuous level locomotion of the wood ant species Formica polyctena . We determined the three-dimensional centre of mass kinematics during the gait cycle and recorded...

.... Here we present, for the first time, single-leg ground reaction forces of ants (body mass 10 mg), measured with a custom-built miniature force plate. We investigated forces and high-speed kinematics for straight level runs (average speed: 8.4 cm s –1 ) of Formica polyctena workers. The major finding...