The name trap-jaw comes from their specially evolved hunting technique. They have a long pair of hooked mandibles and the workers forage with their mandibles held open at 180 degrees. These automatically snap shut on pray when sensory hairs on the inside of the mandibles are touched. The force of the mandibles closing on the pray either kills it or stuns it and this followed with a potent sting which further paralyses the prey - enables the ant to catch prey which would normally quickly escape other ant species.
Ants of this genus are recorded as having the fastest self-powered predatory strike in the animal kingdom. One study on O. bauri recorded peak speeds of between 126 – 230 km hr (78 to 143 mph) with the jaws closing in just 130 microseconds.
These ants are also capable of launching themselves into the air by snapping their jaws shut against the ground or other hard object. These strikes serve two main purposes. When they are attacking a large intruder a mandible strike catapults the ant away from the intruder protecting the ant from a retaliatory strike and when the ants are intentionally trying to escape a predator they will also strike their jaws against the ground and the action flings them into the air – landing hopefully out of harms way. The distance jumped depends on the species but heights of 8 cm and a horizontal distance of 30-38 cm have been recorded.