Step Aside, Cheetah: There’s an Unexpected Animal That’s Taken the Top Spot for Fastest on Land
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While the cheetah can keep its claim to fame as fastest mammal on land, it is hardly the fastest relative to its size.
When it comes to measuring speed in body lengths per second, the Australian tiger beetle took top seed for a while. But now even this insect has been replaced by an arachnid: a mite.
Paratarsotomus macropalpis, which is about the size of a sesame seed, was recently recorded moving at a whopping 322 body lengths per second. The cheetah, as a comparison, only runs 16 body lengths per second, though that equates to 60 mph.
If the mite were human size and could maintain the same number of body lengths per second, it would run about 1,300 mph.
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Source: The Blaze
