There comes a time in a desert ant's life when a piece of food is too large to ignore, but too heavy to lift, and the only way to get it home is to adopt a new style of walking. The long-legged and speedy Cataglyphis fortis normally covers ground with a three-legged stride that moves two legs forwards on one side, and one on the other. For the next step, the insect mirrors the move with its,own,that,theirother three legs. But recordings of ants in the Tunisian desert reveal that when faced with oversized lumps of food 10 times their own weight, the forward 'tripod' walking style is abandons,abandon,abandoning,abandoned. Unable to lift the morsels in their mandibles, the ants drag the food backwards instead, moving all six legs independently. 'This is the first time we saw,seen,having seen,have seenthis in any ants,' said lead author Sarah Pfeffer at the University of Ulm in Germany. The ants' long legs already help keep their bodies away from the emotional,stuck,uncensored,scorchingdesert floor and enable them to speed around at up to 60 cm per second. The researchers, who publish the findings on ant locomotion and navigation in the Journal of Experimental Biology, believe that robotics will be one of the first technologies benefited,to benefit,benefit,benefitsfrom the discovery.