The trap-jaw ant has a won notorious reputation in the insect kingdom for its super-strong, spring-loaded mandibles, which it uses to crush prey with ease and defend its nests.

However, a new study, reported in PLOS ONE, has revealed a whole new use for its impressive jaws: flinging itself out of "death traps" set by predators.

Research carried out by Fredrick Larabee and Andrew Suarez, entomologists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, compounds earlier findings from 2006, which showed that trap-jaw ants could use their lightning-fast mouths for "ballistic jaw propulsion"—in short, opening their jaws to 180 degrees before snapping them shut at 140 miles per hour.

"They produce so much force that when they strike [a part of the ground] that's relatively immovable, that force gets projected back on the ant and they go flying through the air," Suarez told National Geographic, which helped to fund the project.

Initially, it wasn't clear whether the insects were performing the feat to intentionally hurl themselves to safety, or whether it was a fortunate misfire when fighting off a predator. Now, it seems the trap-jaw ants' acrobatics are a deliberate way of rocketing themselves to safety—especially when pitted against their most natural predator, the antlion.

To investigate, Larabee and his team placed single trap-jaw ants into plastic cups filled with 4cm of sand. These cups also contained an antlion, which hunts by building pits in fine sand, under which they wait for their victim to topple. Once a trap-jaw ant enters one of these "death traps", the sandy walls inevitably collapse beneath it, funnelling it directly into the spiked mouth of its nemesis.

As seen in the video, many trap-jaw ants managed to successfully escape their imminent doom by striking their jaws against the ground and jumping free. The researchers found that out of 117 trials the trap-jaw ants threw themselves to safety around 15 percent of the time—and doubled their chances of survival in the process.

Of course, not all jumps ended well; some simply propelled the ant further down the pit to meet its end. But Larabee and Suarez also found that one species of trap-jaw ant—the Odontomachus brunneus—was able to run fast enough to avoid the death trap entirely.

This story originally appeared on WIRED UK.