Photo from open sources
A cheetah immediately comes to mind, doesn’t it? After all, he is capable reach speeds of up to 120 kilometers per hour. Of course this wild the cat cannot move for so long, but we say here about the possible, or rather the ultimate, speed of certain living creatures.
In water, the record holder is a swordfish that can move with at a speed of 90 kilometers per hour. Well, in the air holds the championship Swift – 333 kilometers per hour.
Also very interesting is the speed of individual movements made living things. There are champions too. So, have a hummingbird the flying muscle contracts in just 8 milliseconds, and the muscles cockroaches (there are many of their subspecies) during the run – for 3-12 milliseconds.
However, a flea can only laugh at such slowness, since it jumps only 0.7-0.9 milliseconds after notices the danger. This super speed is achieved thanks to the “spring effect” possessed by special protein compounds at the base of the legs of the insect. So a little flea, just pull the trigger.
Stinging cells of jellyfish “work” even faster, although muscle movement has nothing to do with it. As soon as the prey or predator touches to the hair of such a cell, a kind of biological an explosion that creates an acceleration for the poisonous “harpoon”, at 40 thousand times the acceleration of gravity!
But let’s not rush to write in the leaders of this unique representative of marine fauna, as the ant Odontomachos, living in the rainforests of Costa Rica, closes its jaws in just 0.1 milliseconds! And what else is curious, thanks to such the antisliding jaws of an ant not only with ease catches fast jumping fleas, but also escapes from danger: slammed mouth over a smooth pebble – and flew away from him a few centimeters, as if released by a catapult …
… when trying to invent more and more speedy means man begins to “spy” on nature, studying features of birds, insects and even bacteria – it comes in very and very reasonable.
