The Fastest Ants in the World - Unit 12 Review

C1 Advanced · Open Cloze · Ready for C1 Advanced 4th Edition, Macmillan Education

For questions 1–8, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word in each gap.

It has been revealed that the northern Sahara is home (0) ___ the world’s fastest ants. Researcher Dr Sarah Pfeffer reported that (1) ___ top speed, Saharan silver ants can travel 108 times (2) ___ body length per second. In (3) ___ to time the ants, Pfeffer and her team first had to find them, and searching for an ant nest hidden away in the sand dunes was far (4) ___ easy. But once a nest had been located, the team connected an aluminum channel to the entrance, and sprinkled biscuit crumbs at the other end. No (5) ___ had the ants detected the crumbs than they began racing towards them. Video footage of the ants running along the channel showed they were covering 85.5cm per second. There is a reason these ants evolved to be so fast. (6) ___ other creatures that live in the dunes, ants do not seek shelter from the midday sun. Instead, when the desert is at (7) ___ hottest, the ants go rushing about looking for food – often the remains of (8) ___ fortunate insects that already died in the heat.

The Fastest Ants in the World

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