The jaws are cocked by large closer muscles while a latch holds them open, storing elastic energy in the head capsule. Trigger hairs on the inner mandible surface release the catch. High-speed video of Odontomachus bauri recorded closure in roughly 0.13 milliseconds at peak speeds of 35 to 64 metres per second, with accelerations on the order of 100,000 times gravity.
The same mechanism has two uses. Against prey it delivers a strike far faster than muscle alone could produce. Against the substrate it becomes propulsion: an ant that strikes a hard surface bounces upward and backward, clearing several centimetres vertically. Researchers distinguish a directed escape jump from a bouncer defence jump used when a colony is disturbed.
The power comes from elastic storage, not from muscle contraction speed, and the same principle appears independently in the mandibles of Mystrium and Strumigenys ants and in the appendages of mantis shrimp. What is often overstated is control: the ballistic jump has limited aim, and the ant lands more or less where physics puts it.