Misa: Worl’s Fatest Land Animal (Relative to Size) Has Set a New Record

Reference from: Speedy Mite Is World’s Fastest Land Animal (Relative to Size)
posted by Christine Dell’sAmore on April 30, 2014

 
 

Scientist at Pomona College, Pitzer College, and Harvey Mudd College observed that a mite, which are seen in southern California, has hit a new record of the world’s fastest land animal relative to size. The tiny sesame seed-size Paratarsotomus macropalpis, a mite whose body size is almost invisible and had long been ignored by scientist, moves at about 322 body lengths per second at its fastest. To compare humans, that would be running 2,000 kilometers an hour.

This tiny creature has established the new record, beating the Australian tiger beetle, the ex-record-holder. When it comes to fastest animals, everybody mentions “the cheetah”, yet it can move at only 16 body lengths per second; Usain Bolt, the fastest human, goes approximately 6 body lengths; the Australian tiger beetle runs 171 body lengths per second. Another researcher doubted and tried it again, but it moved at the speed repeatedly.

While the mite also has a well-sealed outer layer specialized against extreme heat, as it lives in extremely hot desert, its evolution is not from the way to escape the heat but likely to hunt its prey. Rubin, a researcher who observed it for entire summer says that it’s hard enough to get any footage on them”. The special cameras’ ability cannot catch up with them moving.

This tiny mite reinforce “scaling”, a scientific theory, which says that the smaller the animal’ body is, the faster it moves, because with light body need less force to move fast.

As we can see on the image, if all were the size of Usain Bolt, during his 100 meters running, the cheetah would run 428 m, the horse runs 265 m, and the mite runs 6,130 m. As for the stride of mite, it goes 135 Hertz (Hz), unlike 3 Hz of the human runners’ stride.

Walter Federle, an expert in insect biomechanics at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., has been excited and surprised by the new research, as he had no clue about the stride frequencies of rapidly running mites. He took the same position about the scaling theory but added that the impossibility to keep practically activate muscles going for a long time, as the leg muscles enables them to run for just little time.

Back to Rubin, he has got curious about their dieting, because when calculated with the scaling theory, its prey could be faster than the mite, and until it is seen, the mite will keep being the king of the fastest land animals.

From this article, we can see the nature potential of animals, which could be benefits if be discovered. Human is known as the smartest animal, however, I am impressed by every animal’s power which has not been observed. The animal world is filled with adventurous mysteries!

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